Amazing Camel Facts:

Camels’ humps are not used to store water. Even though they come from hot climates, their humps store fat and also help the rest of their bodies to stay cooler. When needed, the fat will be converted to food or water.

The word ‘camel’ comes from an Arabic word, when it’s literally translated, it means beauty. Don’t ever try and say that camels are ugly! (Look at that sweet face above…lol)

They need to stay hydrated in the desert, so it’s no surprise that camels can drink as much as 40 gallons of water at once. Considering it’s not being stored in their humps, that’s pretty amazing.

During the Second World War, German tank drivers would drive their vehicles over camel droppings, thinking it would bring them good luck.

Arabian camels are the ones which only have one hump (Asian camels have two). In Arabian culture, they are so iconic that there are more than 160 words which mean ‘camel’. Camels are very social, even though they might seem extremely laid-back and slow. In the wild, they travel with around 30 others when looking for food.

Camels are very social, even though they might seem extremely laid-back and slow. In the wild, they travel with around 30 others when looking for food.

There are more than 14 million camels in the world – most of them live in the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

In Turkey, a camel wrestling event takes place every January. Camel wrestling dates back to the ancient world, so even though animal rights groups aren’t very happy with the sport, there are no signs of it stopping in the near future.

Camels will not damage their mouths if they eat thorny twigs and other items which might cause injury to other animals.  A camel’s mouth is split into two. This helps them to graze and eat their food more effectively.

The majority of mammals, including humans, only need to lose 15% of water before becoming dehydrated. However, camels are able to lose up to 25%, which means they can go much longer without water.

In Middle Eastern countries, many people eat camel and consider it a delicacy. The hump is apparently the best part, and younger camels are tastier than the older animals.

A camel’s nostrils are amazing. They retain water vapor which can be returned to the body when necessary, but they can also be closed if there is too much sand or wind blowing.

Camels don’t just spit for fun. If they feel threatened, they will use it as a defense mechanism. Be nice to camels and they’ll be nice to you!

They may not seem like fighters, but camels have been used during wars in the past. Ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians used to ride them, but they were used in the 20^th Century too.

In 1855, the US Congress allowed the War Department to purchase camels using a $30,000 budget. They were used for several years, until the soldiers became tired of their bad tempers and smell.

Wild Bactrians are the only type of camels which have never been tamed or domesticated. They live in the wastelands of Eastern Asia and are incredibly tough creatures. However, they are less than a thousand of them left on the earth.

The world’s largest meal included a roasted camel. It was served at an Arabic wedding feast.

If you visit Abu Dhabi, you’ll be able to pick up a camel milkshake – made with real camel milk. The milk has loads more Vitamin C and iron than cows’ milk, and is very good for you. It is used in Kazakhstan to help treat illnesses, such as tuberculosis. The only reason it hasn’t made its way to the Western world is because the governments won’t pay for testing processes.

The Camel Mobile Library provides people in Kenya with literature. Camels are used to take books to areas which would not otherwise have access to a library.

A camel might appear to have thick fur, but its coat reflects the sun. This makes it ideal in the hot desert, and the camels don’t get too hot.

The Al-Dhafra Camel Festival takes place every year in the UAE. One of the most popular events is the beauty contest, which sees thousands of camels compete for the title.

Camels aren’t as slow as they look – they can run up to speeds of 40mph. However, they cannot maintain this for very long, but can comfortably move at up to 25mph.

The legend of the Red Ghost tells the story of a terrifying red camel wandering an Arizona desert and causing all kinds of atrocities, including killing people and trampling over tents.

The only time you will see a camel without a hump is when it is first born. Once the baby camel is old enough to eat solids, the hump (or humps) will start growing.

Are honey bees as busy as they say?  Do they really dance? How do they make honey?  Let’s find out!

A colony is a group of bees that live and fly together. One colony can contain around 20,000 to 60,000 bees. The colony is divided into three groups; a queen, who will lay eggs to bring the next generation of bees to the hive; drones, male bees whose only function is to mate with the queen; workers, the female bees responsible for everything else…lol. They collect the pollen and nectar, circulate and clean the air in the hive, tend to the queen and build and protect that hive.

Queen

During the winter season, a productive queen will form a new colony by laying eggs within each cell inside a honeycomb. She lays one egg after every 45 seconds resulting in around 2500 eggs in a day.  Compared to other insects and other honey bees, the queen bee has a longer lifespan, because she is the one to bring the next generations of bees. In her 2-3 years of life, she may lay up to 2500 eggs per day, so in her lifetime, she will have produced over 1 million offspring. As she ages, her productivity declines though she can live up to 5 years. Mature queen bees have larger body sizes, because of their long abdomen containing several ovaries, enabling them to produce a lifetime’s supply of eggs. This length also enables her to cement an egg into the bottom of a honey comb cell.  If the queen is absent, honey bees will notice that absence within a span of one hour. After a few hours of agitation, emergency cells are constructed on existing worker larvae. The worker larvae is built for a new comb and fed royal jelly to enable its fast growth and development into a new queen.

Drone Bees

Male bees, called drones, exist to mate with the queen.  After that happens, they die. Tough life.

Worker Bees

Worker bees teach younger members how to make honey at an early age. They are first made to fly miles away from the hive, and then taught how to gather nectar and pollen from blooming flowers. Young honey bees then fly with the collected nectar back to the hive.  In the hive, worker bees make them chew up the nectar and then deposit that into honeycomb wax cells. They then fan their wings vigorously over the nectar to dehydrate the liquid inside in the cells. This will transform a slightly thin liquid into very thick honey. Once they have mastered this art, they officially start producing honey like other worker bees.

Honey Bees actually will perform a ‘waggle dance’ to share information about the best food sources. They move in a figure-eight and waggle their body to indicate the direction of the food source, distance to patches of flowers and to new-site locations with other members of the colony. Nectar is carried by scooping it in a special sac behind the bee’s leg. In order to make one pound of honey, 556 worker bees must fly to around 2 million flowers to gather nectar and pollen. In their lifespan of 6-8 weeks, worker bees have to fly approximately 90,000 miles, equivalent to 1½ times the earth’s circumference in search of quality pollen and nectar, to produce that one pound of honey.  Amazingly, in one collection trip, 50-100 flowers are pollinated. And only 4 species of honey bees are kept for producing honey: the Apis melifera, meliponines, Apis lithohermaea and Apis nearctica.

Basic Honey Bee Facts

Your basic honey bee has 170 odorant receptors that enable it to recognize its relative’s signals, social communication within the hive and recognition of odor for finding food. Their sense of smell is so precise (and 50 times more powerful than a dog), that they can recognize different floral varieties when looking for pollen and nectar. Pheromones released by the honey bees together with compounds building up the nest wax, such as fatty acids and carbohydrates, make up the volatile mixture of odor. A honey bee’s odor helps it to determine its own colony, and distinguish between nest mates and foreign bees so they can identify intruders from other species. The sense of smell of a honey bee is so sensitive that carbon dioxide released from human breath may smell threatening to them, stimulating them to sting…so no heavy breathing around bees!

Honey bees rarely sleep; they work the whole day and night. When they want to sleep, they take shifts inside the hive. Their sleep pattern changes with their age. The younger bees will sleep a lot less while the older bees will sleep more than the younger bees. Older bees need more sleep because it helps their memory.  Honey bees will hardly work when the temperatures are below 57⁰F or above 100⁰F. When the temperature is below 55⁰F, they can’t fly. They can only fly when the temperatures are between 55⁰F and 60⁰F. On extremely hot days, they will cluster outside unshaded hives because too much shade makes them irritable, especially in the summer.

A honey bee has two barbed lancets on its stinger, that if it stings you with it, it is unable to pull it back. Due to this fact, not only the stinger is left behind, but part of his abdomen, digestive tract, muscles and nerves are also left. This results into a massive abdominal rupture that kills the bee. Honey bees have three simple eyes called ocelli and two large compound eyes. They use their ocelli eyes to detect light intensity. The other two large eyes are used for detecting movement.

Honey bees belong in the hymenopterans family, therefore have four wings. Their wings are arranged in two pairs, connected by a row of hooks called hamulus on the back wing. Although their wings help in flight, the fore wings are much larger than the hind wings. Apart from flight, the fore wings are also used as a cooling mechanism. The hind wings are used for flight and fanning away heat from the hive.  The sound of a honey bee is called a buzz. This is their trademark sound, which is created as a result of rapid beating of their wings. They flap their wings 200 times per second, creating vibrations in the air that result into the sound perception called buzzing.

Have you ever wondered why beekeepers wear white overalls? Honey bees dislike dark colors probably because they came to realize that most of the honey predators, bears and other animals, have dark colors. Dark colors make them defensive of their sweet honey. Therefore, beekeepers wear white colors to decrease their chances of being stung.  Studies have proven that honey bees have the ability to recognize human faces and remember them for at least two days. It is said that they have a better memory of remembering faces than some humans. Honey bees are lovers of caffeine and can get hooked on caffeine like people. Studies reveal that honey bees love caffeine because it boosts their long-term memory.