Wild bees build nests in trees, logs, hedges, cliffs or walls. Removing their honey destroys their nest.
Over the centuries, people have designed reusable nests – ‘hives’ – that enable harvesting of honey without bothering the bees too much.
Worker bees fill the hive with vertical, double-sided sheets of wax honeycomb. Each side consists of hexagonal cells, most of which are 5–7mm/1.5–¼in across.
These receive worker eggs and store the colony’s food: honey, pollen and bee bread, a mixture of pollen, nectar, saliva and microorganisms. Slightly larger cells receive drone eggs, and very large, thimble-shaped ones receive queen eggs.
Many beekeepers supply honeycomb starter sheets so that bees don’t need to make so much wax and, as a result, have more energy to make honey. These sheets encourage workers to build relatively few drone cells, whereas honeycomb built entirely by bees has more drone cells. This triggers the queen to lay more drone eggs, and it’s said that having more drones makes a colony happier.
Honey is the bees’ main source of carbohydrate, pollen their main source of protein. But both contain many other vital nutrients
A bee colony – or family – consists of:
- A queen bee – the only fertile female. She lays eggs, keeps the colony happy, is the longest bee and lives 18 months on average, although she can survive up to six years.
- Up to 30,000-60,000 worker bees – small infertile females that groom and feed other bees, maintain the hive, collect nectar, pollen, propolis and water, and make honey. A spring or summer born worker lives six weeks at most, an autumn born one six months.
- Several hundreds or thousands of drones – fertile males that are shorter and stouter than the queen, have large eyes but no sting, wax glands or pollen baskets, and live eight weeks at most.
Only a few of the 25,000 or so species of bee make honey, and most of these produce only tiny amounts.
Honeybees inhabit every continent except Antarctica. Apis melllifera is the most common type in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. Honeybees live in large colonies and store a lot of honey. In contrast, the bumblebee (Bombus bombus) lives in a small colony that stores a tablespoon at most.
Honeybee varieties differ in honey-making ability, honeycomb colour and building, hive-care, immunity, tendency to swarm (form a new colony), multiplication, appetite and character.
The most popular are Italians (brown-and-yellow-striped), Carniolans (black or grey) and Caucasians (grey).
Thanks to migration and importation, though, many honeybees are mongrels today.
From here on I’ll generally call honeybees simply ‘bees’.
Honeybees change nectar from flowers into honey, to make food for themselves.
The average hive stores 9–14kg / 20–30lb of honey by the end of the year. This represents a huge joint effort because a single worker bee produces only half a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. It takes nectar collections from around 2.6 million flowers, involving bee flights totaling around 88,000km / 55,000 miles, to produce just 450g / 1lb of honey.
A guy and his manager go down to the docks. The manager is betting every dockworker he sees that his guy can make love to 100 women in a row, without pausing, and satisfy them all.
Bets are made, and they agree that they’ll meet the next day. The next day, 100 women are lined up along the dock. The guy drops his pants and starts.
True to his word, he moves from one to the next, satisfying each one without pausing: 1.. 2.. 3.. on and on he goes: 49.. 50.. 51.. He slows down somewhat: 83.... 84.... 85.... but he is still moving from one to the next, and the women are still satisfied: 97............ 98............. 99................ and before he can get to the last woman, he has a heart attack and dies.
The manager scratches his head in puzzlement and says, “I don’t understand it! It went perfectly well at practice this morning!”
A masked man goes into a sperm bank, points a gun at the woman behind the counter, and says, “Open the safe.”
She says, “This isn’t a real bank; it’s a sperm bank.”
He says, “Open the safe or I’ll shoot.”
She opens the safe, and he says, “Now take one of the bottles and drink it.”
After she opens the bottle and drinks it, he takes off his mask and the woman realizes the robber is her husband.
He says, “Now you see? It’s not so difficult, is it?”
Two young lovers go up to the mountains for a romantic winter vacation. When they get there, the guy goes out to chop some wood. When he gets back, he says, “Honey, my hands are freezing!”
She says, “Well, put them here between my thighs and that will warm them up.”
After lunch he goes back out to chop some more wood and comes back and says again, “Man! My hands are really freezing!”
She says again, “Well, put them here between my thighs and warm them up.”
He does, and again that warms him up.
After dinner, he goes out one more time to chop some wood to get them through the night. When he returns, he says again, “Honey, my hands are really, really freezing!”
She looks at him and says, “For crying out loud, don’t your ears ever get cold?”
A man is in a hotel lobby. He wants to ask the clerk a question. As he turns to go to the front desk, he accidentally bumps into a woman beside him and as he does, his elbow goes into her breast.
They are both quite startled. The man turns to her and says, “Ma’am, if your heart is as soft as your breast, I know you’ll forgive me.”
She replies, “If your penis is as hard as your elbow, I’m in room 436.”
Steve is shopping for a new motorcycle. He finally finds one for a great price, but it’s missing a seal, so whenever it rains he has to smear Vaseline over the spot where the seal should be.
One day, his girlfriend asks him over for dinner to meet her parents. He drives his new bike to her house, where she is outside waiting for him.
“No matter what happens at dinner tonight, don’t say a word.”
She tells him, “Our family had a fight a while ago about doing dishes. We haven’t done any since, but the first person to speak at dinner has to do them.”
Steve sits down for dinner and it is just how she described it. Dishes are piled up to the ceiling in the kitchen, and nobody is saying a word. So Steve decides to have a little fun. He grabs his girlfriend, throws her on the table and has sex with her in front of her parents.
His girlfriend is a little flustered, her dad is obviously livid, and her mom horrified when he sits back down, but no one says a word. A few minutes later he grabs her mom, throws her on the table and does a repeat performance. Now his girlfriend is furious, her dad is boiling, and her mother is a little happier.
But still there is complete silence at the table. All of a sudden there is a loud clap of thunder, and it starts to rain. Steve remembers his motorcycle. He jumps up and grabs his jar of Vaseline.
Upon witnessing this, his girlfriend’s father backs away from the table and screams, “OKAY, ENOUGH! I’LL DO THE DISHES.”
What is a blonde’s idea of dental floss?
Pubic hair.
A man who just got a raise decides to buy a new scope for his rifle. He goes to a rifle shop and asks the clerk to show him a scope.
The clerk takes out a scope and says to the man, “This scope is so good, you can see my house up on that hill.”
The man takes a look through the scope, and starts laughing.
“What’s so funny?” asks the clerk.
“I see a naked man and a naked woman running around in the house,” the man replies.
The clerk grabs the scope from the man, and looks at his house. Then he hands two bullets to the man and says, “Here are two bullets. I’ll give you this scope for nothing if you take these two bullets, shoot my wife’s head off and shoot the guy’s dick off.”
The man takes another look through the scope and says, “You know what? I think I can do that with one shot!”
It was a nice sunny day and three men were walking down a country road when they saw a bush with a pig’s ass popping out.
The first man says, “I wish that was Demi Moore’s ass.”
The second man says, “I wish that was Pamela Anderson’s ass.”
Then the third man says, “I wish it was dark.”
Q. Why do blondes get confused in the ladies room?
A. Because they have to pull their own pants down.
A young couple on the brink of divorce visit a marriage counselor.
The counselor asks the wife, “What is the problem?”
She responds, “My husband suffers from premature ejaculation.”
The counselor turns to her husband and inquires, “Is that true?”
The husband replies, “Well not exactly; it’s her that suffers, not me.”
A man and his wife go to their honeymoon place for their 25th anniversary.
As the couple reflected on that magical evening 25 years ago, the wife asked the husband, “When you first saw my naked body in front of you, what was going through your mind?”
The husband replied, “All I wanted to do was to fuck your brains out, and suck your tits dry.”
Then, as the wife undressed, she asked, “What are you thinking now?”
He replied, “It looks like I did a pretty good job.”
It was the mailman’s last day on the job after 35 years of carrying the mail through all kinds of weather to the same neighborhood.
When he arrived at the first house on his route he was greeted by the whole family there, who congratulated him and sent him on his way with a big gift envelope.
At the second house they presented him with a box of fine cigars.
The folks at the third house handed him a selection of terrific fishing lures.
At the fourth house he was met at the door by a strikingly beautiful woman in a revealing negligee. She took him by the hand, gently led him through the door, and led him up the stairs to the bedroom where she blew his mind with the most passionate love he had ever experienced.
When he had enough they went downstairs, where she made him a full breakfast with a cup of steaming coffee.
As she was pouring the coffee, he noticed a $5 bill sticking out from under the cup’s bottom edge.
“All this is just too wonderful for words,” he said, “but what’s the money for?”
“Well,” she said, “last night I told my husband that today would be your last day, and that we should do something special for you. I asked him what to give you and he said, ‘Fuck him, give him a fiver.’”
The lady then said, “The breakfast was my idea.”
A pianist was hired to play background music for a movie. When it was completed he asked when and where he could see the picture.
The producer sheepishly confessed that it was actually a porno film and it was due out in a month.
A month later, the musician went to a porno theater to see it.
With his collar up and dark glasses on, he took a seat in the back row, next to a couple who also seemed to be in disguise.
The movie was even raunchier than he had feared, featuring group sex, S/M and even a dog.
After a while, the embarrassed pianist turned to the couple and said, “I’m only here to listen to the music.”
“Yeah?” replied the man. “We’re only here to see our dog.”
Two 90-year-olds had been dating for a while, when the man told the woman,
“Well, tonight’s the night we have sex!”
And so they did.
As they are lying in bed afterward, the man thinks to himself:
"My God, if I knew she was a virgin, I would have been much more gentle with her!"
And the woman was thinking to herself:
"My God, if I knew the old geezer could actually get it up, I would have taken off my panty hose!"
There was a guy who was struggling to decide what to wear to go to a costume party... Then he had a bright idea.
When the host answered the door, he found the guy standing there wearing only underwear.
“What the hell are you supposed to be?” asked the host.
“A premature ejaculation,” said the man. “I just came in my underpants!”
Q. Do you know what 6.9 is?
A. A good thing fucked up by a period.
Little Johnny comes in to school one morning wearing a brand new watch. His best friend, little Benny, wants to know where the watch is from, so Johnny tells his story:
“I was coming from the bathroom to my bedroom when I heard a strange noise from my parent’s bedroom. I walked in and saw them bouncing up and down. Dad said I could have anything I wanted as long as I didn't tell the family. I asked for a new watch and here it is.”
Benny decides he wants one too, so night after night he listens outside his parents’ bedroom for any strange noises and, sure enough, eventually he hears some banging and groaning from the other side of the door. He walks in and catches his parents in the act, so his dad offers him anything he wants to
keep quiet about the whole affair.
Benny immediately says, “I want a watch.”
The dad sighs and says, “Alright, but go and stand in the corner and don’t make any noise.”
A man was wandering around a carnival and he happened to see a fortuneteller’s tent.
Thinking it would be good for a laugh, he went inside and sat down.
“Ah...” said the woman as she gazed into her crystal ball. “I see you are the father of TWO children.”
“That’s what you think,” said the man scornfully. “I’m the father of THREE children.”
The woman grinned and said, “That’s what YOU think!”
