Speed of Work
Honeybees visit up to about 40 flowers per minute depending on floral type, nectar availability and weather conditions. Floral visitation rate by honeybees of some important crops:
| Flower | Seconds per visit |
|---|---|
| Apricot | 10 |
| Apple | 68 |
| Cherry | 82 |
| Raspberry | 116 |
| Black currant | 134 |
The longer the time period, the greater the nectar availability. It takes twice as much time to collect a load of nectar compared with a load of pollen. A bee will visit 100–1000 flowers per trip from the hive.
There is general agreement that a single bee will do an average of 10 trips per day (range 7–13). Large single loads of nectar may weigh 70 mg for Italian bees. Sometimes a hive may gain 4–10 kg in a single day. For a 5 kg (11 pounds) gain this means:
In two days a strong hive with more than 20,000 foragers may fill a honey super. This is for nectar, ripe honey has its water fraction reduced significantly.
Read more about this topic: Honey Flow
Famous quotes containing the words speed of, speed and/or work:
“No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“There exist certain individuals who are, by nature, given purely to contemplation and are utterly unsuited to action, and who, nevertheless, under a mysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a speed which they themselves would have thought beyond them.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)