An interesting travel article about Transylvania in the Financial Times noted that bees in the Carpathian Forest of Transylvania are not afflicted by the varroa mite  found in bees elsewhere in Romania and the rest of the world, including Hawaii (Financial Times, November 5-6 2011).

Coincidence, or are these bees special in a way not recognized by the reporter?

Since bees are deaf, they don’t use verbal language to communicate. Instead, they dance to share information and to make requests. (Bees receive the input both by sight and by feeling the vibrations dancing bees cause).

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Each of our hives each has about 50,000 bees. Each hive has one queen, and 100 female worker bees for every male drone bee. The queen’s only job is to lay eggs and a drone’s job is to mate with the queen. The worker bees are responsible for everything else: gathering nectar, guarding the hive and honey, caring for the queen and larvae, keeping the hive clean, and producing honey.

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A single bee weighs .00025 pounds. 4,000 bees together weigh only one pound. Each of our hives has 50,000 bees, weighing 12 pounds together.

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