In honour of World Bee Day on May 20, startling facts about nature's hardest-working pollinators that you might not know.
The residue of chemical weapons was assumed to be microscopic splotches of yellow found on jungle plants in Laos and Cambodia.
The yellow specks were ultimately discovered to be excretions of enormous swarms of wild honeybees, according to bee experts.
When pollen was scarce, bumblebees damaged tomato and mustard plant leaves in an unusual way, causing the plants to blossom up to 30 days earlier than unnibbled plants.
A human harvesting honey from a ladder is seen in an 8,000-year-old cave painting in Spain.
Beeswax traces on pottery imply that early farmers kept bees as early as 9,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptian tombs have also been discovered with honey.
The great majority of bees eat pollen and nectar, but certain species have evolved to eat meat, replacing flower meadows with dead animal carcasses.
A honeybee uses a waggle dance to publicise and argue the advantages of a new nest when scouting and inspecting it.