fauna artwork

Education

At The Tasmanian Honey Company, we’re passionate about educating the world about the power of this golden elixir and the incredible effort that bees go to in order to produce such a beneficial product. 

  • There are over 1,500 species of Australian native bees and around 20,000 different species globally.
  • A bee’s brain is as small as a sesame seed, but they are excellent Mathematicians and Engineers. They know a hexagon is the strongest shape and will give them the maximum storage capacity.
  • Bees have 5 eyes. 2 compound eyes on each side of their head that are made up of tiny lenses, and 3 simple eyes on the top of the head.
  • They can see all colours except for red.
  • A honeybees wings stroke 11,400 times per minute!
  • Worker bees have a 6-8 week life span.
  • One bee will only produce 1/2 of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime.
  • When a honeybee has found a new patch of flowers they will go back to the hive a preform a “Waggle dance”, much like a figure of 8. This communication is telling the other workers the direction and distance to the newly found nectar and pollen.
  • Honeybees never sleep!
  • Drones (male) do not have stingers. If a Worker bee (female) stings they will die shortly after.
  • The average beehive can house around 50,000 bees.
  • Each bee has 170 odorant receptors, which means they are extremely sensitive to smell.
  • A single Queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day.
  • The Queen can select the sex of their larvae.
  • Bees are the best pollinators in the world. Around 1/3 of our food comes from bees honey pollination.
  • To make 1 jar of honey, bees need to visit around 2 million flowers.
  • Honey is the only food that will not rot.
  • Honey is the only food that contains all the essential nutrients needed to sustain life.
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Articles

Wild West Coast Tasmania

There are 13 World Heritage listed areas in Australia. The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) was declared in 1982, covering one and a half million hectares. Tasmania’s West Coast Wilderness is one of the most breath taking, raw, untouched, and protected areas on earth. With its pure air and rolling hills, calm and spiritual […]

Ark of Taste

The Ark of Taste is an online catalogue of foods at risk of disappearing that are a part of cultures and traditions of the entire world. Plant and animal species are to be found onboard the Ark, but also processed products, because, together with plant and animal biodiversity, cheeses, cured meats, breads and sweets, expressions […]

Why bees are the best pollinators in the world!

Many flowers cannot produce seeds unless pollen is carried from the male part of a flower to the female part. This process is called pollination. More than 80% of all pollination occurs by insects, including beetles, moth’s and flies but the Honeybee is the leader because they spend most of their life collecting pollen, as […]

Alchemy symbols

Since the beginning of Alchemy, Alchemists have used symbols to represent different elements. Alchemy symbols sometimes contain hints of the qualities the elements were thought to have, as well as the history of the element. Using symbols helped Alchemists keep their work private, as much of it was a carefully guarded secret from non-alchemists who […]

The formation of Beeswax explained

The foraging worker bee collects nectar from the flower, stores it in their abdomen and flies back to the hive where they pass it on to the “hive bees”. When combined with their saliva the hive bee uses their honey stomachs to break down the structure of the sugar content in honey before they regurgitate […]

How (and why) to substitute sugar with honey in your cooking

Founder, Julian Wolfhagen – After more than 40 years in the industry, he’s still passionate about producing honey.“Every culture holds honey in a very reverential place and that’s because of the health that it brings,” Wolfhagen tells SBS Food. “It’s high in antioxidants, it has a low GI, which makes it quite suitable for certain […]

The Honey Bee

Honey bees, like ants, termites and some wasps are social insects. Unlike ants and wasps, bees are vegetarians; their protein comes from pollen and their carbohydrate comes from honey which they make from nectar. Honey Bees make combs of waxen cells placed side by side that provide spaces to rear young and to store honey. […]

The Great Manuka Dispute

LEPTOSPERMUM SCOPARIUM Manuka honey in Australia is derived from the Leptospermum Scoparium, also known as the Teatree. The Leptospermum species is comprised of 86 recognised subspecies, of which only two are found outside of Australia. One, Leptospermum recurvum is found in Sabah, Malaysia, and Sulawesi, Indonesia. The other is the Leptospermum scoparium which is found […]