Un-BEE-lievable Bees

What’s The Buzz?!

Urban rooftops are buzzing! The CBC in Montreal and Toronto have approximately 80,000 new friends on their roofs - honeybees! These bees are a part of the urban beekeeping movement that helps to reduce the decline of honeybees and it's an excellent way to help the environment through pollination.



Four hives are now on the roofs of our Toronto and Montreal buildings. Each hive has a queen bee and thousands of worker bees and drones. By the end of the summer there will probably be 50,000 bees in each hive — that’s a lot of bees!

Un-BEE-lievable facts about bees

Bees have 2 stomachs - 1 stomach for eating and 1 for storing nectar collected from flowers.

Bees have 5 eyes.

Bees' wings beat 200 times per second.

Bees have been around for 30 million years.

Bees have 2 pairs of wings. The wings have tiny teeth so they can lock together when the bee is flying.

A bee must collect nectar from about 2 million flowers to make 455 grams of honey.

A queen bee will live 1-5 years. Worker bees live for 30 days.

A queen bee can lay about 2,000 eggs per day.

Unlike mosquitos and wasps, honeybees rarely sting. When they do, they die immediately.

Fun facts about honeybees

Honeybees are calm, docile and never sting unless they feel threatened.

Bees are vegetarian (they do not eat meat). Wasps are carnivores (they feed on meat which is why they sting).

Bees usually visit trees, plants and flowers within a 5 km radius of their hive.

Bees play a major role in fruit, vegetable and nut production: about a third of what we eat relies on their pollination.

Fun facts about honey