How many times a minute does a bee flap its wings?

A scientist in 1947 determined that your average worker honey bee beats its wings at the rate of 208 to 277 beats per second. That adds up to 12,480 to 16,820 beats per minute. Pretty fast, huh? Really, though, there’s so much variety in the insect world that, in a wing-flapping contest a fly would beat a bee. Some flies beat their wings up to 1000 times per second. Butterflies couldn’t qualify for the contest. They beat their wings only 5 to 20 times per second.