Quiz on Bees

What do bees collect from flowers to make honey?

• Nectar ✓ (Correct answer)
• Sap
• Pollen
• Dew

Source: Bees turn flower nectar into honey; the pollen they gather mostly feeds their growing larvae.

What do worker bees build the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb from?

• Honey
• Propolis
• Beeswax ✓ (Correct answer)
• Pollen

Source: Bees secrete wax flakes from glands on their belly, then chew them into comb.

Which bee is the only one that lays eggs in a hive?

• The drone
• The queen ✓ (Correct answer)
• The worker
• The scout

Source: A single queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day, all by herself.

What actually produces a bee's buzzing sound?

• Its voice
• Its legs rubbing
• Its beating wings ✓ (Correct answer)
• Its stinger

Source: The buzz comes from wings beating around 230 times a second, not a voice or rubbing legs.

What happens to a honeybee right after it stings a person?

• It sheds the stinger but survives
• It dies ✓ (Correct answer)
• It loses a wing
• Nothing happens

Source: Its barbed stinger tears free and kills it; wasps keep their smooth stinger and sting again.

What is the permanent home group of bees living together called?

• A hive
• A pod
• A swarm
• A colony ✓ (Correct answer)

Source: A colony is the settled household; a swarm is bees on the move hunting for a new nest.

How does a honeybee tell hivemates where to find good food?

• A waggle dance ✓ (Correct answer)
• Scent trails
• A buzzing song
• Antenna taps

Source: The famous waggle dance encodes both direction and distance to the flowers — bee GPS.

How do bees thicken runny nectar into honey?

• Evaporate its water ✓ (Correct answer)
• Ferment it
• Add pollen
• Freeze it

Source: Bees fan their wings to evaporate the nectar's water until it thickens into honey.

How far from the hive will honeybees typically fly to find food?

• Up to 1 mile
• Up to 5 miles ✓ (Correct answer)
• Up to 15 miles
• Up to 30 miles

Source: Foragers routinely range up to 5 miles, visiting thousands of flowers per trip.

Which of these crops depends most heavily on bee pollination?

• Wheat
• Rice
• Potatoes
• Almonds ✓ (Correct answer)

Source: California's almond orchards need billions of honeybees trucked in every spring to set fruit.

A person who keeps bees is professionally known as what?

• An entomologist
• A botanist
• An apiarist ✓ (Correct answer)
• A florist

Source: Beekeeping is called apiculture, and the keeper an apiarist; a bee farm is an apiary.

What mainly gives a jar of honey its particular flavor and color?

• The bee species
• The flowers visited ✓ (Correct answer)
• The hive material
• The season length

Source: Honey tastes like its flowers — clover, orange blossom, or buckwheat each yield a distinct jar.

What is propolis, the substance bees gather from tree buds?

• A type of honey
• Bee venom
• Larval food
• Bee glue ✓ (Correct answer)

Source: Propolis is antimicrobial 'bee glue' used to seal and sterilize the hive — humans put it in remedies.

What decides whether a bee larva becomes a queen or a worker?

• Its genes
• Its diet ✓ (Correct answer)
• The egg size
• The cell shape

Source: Queens and workers share identical DNA — diet alone, a lifetime of royal jelly, makes a queen.

How do honeybees survive cold winters inside the hive?

• Cluster and shiver ✓ (Correct answer)
• Hibernate fully
• Migrate south
• Burn stored wax

Source: Bees huddle in a winter cluster and shiver their flight muscles to keep the core near 95°F.

Roughly how much honey must a colony burn to make one pound of beeswax?

• About 2 pounds
• About 20 pounds
• About 40 pounds
• About 8 pounds ✓ (Correct answer)

Source: Bees eat about 8 pounds of honey to sweat out a single pound of wax — costly construction.

About how many flower visits does it take to make one pound of honey?

• About 200,000
• About 5 million
• About 2 million ✓ (Correct answer)
• About 10 million

Source: It takes roughly 2 million flower visits — and 55,000 miles of flight — for a single pound.

How do bees see flowers differently from the way humans do?

• Ultraviolet light ✓ (Correct answer)
• Infrared light
• Only black and white
• Magnified detail

Source: Bees see ultraviolet, revealing hidden 'landing strip' patterns on petals invisible to us.

What defines colony collapse disorder, a major threat to bees?

• Queens stop laying eggs
• Adult bees are found dead inside
• The hive is invaded by wasps
• Worker bees abandon the hive ✓ (Correct answer)

Source: The eerie hallmark of CCD is that worker bees vanish entirely — colonies collapse without a pile of dead bodies to explain it.

Which tiny parasite is the leading killer of honeybee colonies worldwide?

• Wax moth
• Tracheal beetle
• Varroa mite ✓ (Correct answer)
• Hive louse

Source: The Varroa mite feeds on bees' fat stores and spreads viruses — every beekeeper's number-one enemy.