Description
Honey bee postcard
This unique Honey bee postcard has been hand-illustrated and designed from a personal visual study of insects by Debbie Knight. The reverse of this A6 Honey bee postcard has been left blank so you can write your own message to send to wildlife fans, entomologists and nature lovers. Why not collect all 12 insect postcards and frame them as mini insect art prints.
Have you seen the other insect postcards in the range? These include the following insect postcards: 7-spot ladybird postcard, Azure damselfly postcard, Elephant hawk-moth postcard, Holly blue butterfly postcard, Jersey tiger moth postcard, Norfolk hawker dragonfly postcard, Peacock butterfly postcard, Rose chafer postcard, Stag beetle postcard, Tawny mining bee postcard and Violet ground beetle postcard.
All 12 insect postcards are also available to buy in a set which is ideal for gifting or collecting. Take a look at the illustrated insect postcard set
The Azure damselfly also appears in the illustrated insects calendar 2025
Facts about this amazing insect
Honey bees are crucial pollinators, helping flowers, fruits, and vegetables grow. They transfer pollen between male and female plant parts, enabling seed and fruit production.
There are three types of honey bee which all live in hives:
- Queen: The only egg-layer, she controls the hive and produces chemicals that guide bee behaviour
- Workers: Female bees that forage, build, protect, and circulate air in the hive. They’re the bees people see outside
- Drones: Male bees whose only job is to mate with a new queen. They’re expelled in winter
Most famous for producing honey, the bees store it as food for the hive over winter. They make 2-3 times more than they need, so we get to enjoy the surplus.
If the queen dies, workers select a young larva and feed it “royal jelly.” This allows it to grow into a new, fertile queen.
Impressive fliers, honey bees reach speeds of about 25 km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second.
They have an exceptional sense of smell. Each bee has 170 odorant receptors which they use to communicate within the hive and identify flowers when foraging.
The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks. During this time, she’ll produce around a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
The queen can live up to five years. She is busiest in the summer months, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day!
Food sources are communicated through the “waggle dance.” When a worker bee returns to the hive, it performs a figure-of-eight motion to signal the direction of the food source.
Over the past 15 years, bee colonies have been disappearing due to a phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder.” Billions of honey bees worldwide are leaving their hives and not returning, with some regions losing up to 90% of their bee populations.
