The fact that honey is both nutritious and delicious is hardly in doubt. What makes honey so amazing is how it is made. The life of a honey bee is dedicated to supporting the colony at large. Each bee has a job that must be done to ensure the colony’s success. One way that bees work together to ensure that the hive succeeds is through the production and storage of honey.
The process of honey-making is incredibly amazing. Let us
learn more about why bees actually make honey and the exact way they do it.
However, before getting into it, here are some interesting facts about honey
that will surprise you:
- Not all bees make honey. In fact, there are just about 7
species of honey bees. Honey bees collect pollen and nectar during their
foraging trips to make honey that’s then stored for the cold winter months.
- A honey bee visits 100 flowers in a single foraging trip.
- Worker bees make just about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey
over the course of their short (six-week) lifespan.
- Honey bees travel a 4- to 5- mile radius foraging for
nectar and pollen. Honey bees travel approximately 55,000 miles to make just
one pound of honey.
- A large colony of honey bees can eat up to 100 to 200
pounds of honey in a single year. See Flux pump
to see how honey and other is pumped in a safe professional manner.
Why Do Bees Make Honey?
Bees are both practical and smart. Worker bees are busy
collecting pollen and nectar during the spring and summer so that they can make
stores of honey for the winter. Bees cannot survive outside the hive in the
cold winter months. Food sources are also incredibly scarce during winter.
Honey bees make as much honey as possible when it is warm to
support the colony during the “offseason.” Honey is fed to the young. New honey
bees eat the pollen and nectar to ensure that they are strong and ready to work
once it is spring.
How Do Bees Actually Make Honey?
Honey production is a multi-step process, as you may
imagine. Let’s follow the honey bees through each step as they make this
amazing food for the colony.
Step 1: Nectar Collection by Worker Bees
Once the worker bees find a good source of nectar, they get
to work. Using their proboscis, they suck up nectar from the inside of flowers,
usually visiting over 100 flowers on a single foraging trip.
The nectar, as well as some honey bee saliva, is then stored in a special sac
known as a honey stomach. The worker bees then return to the hive once their
honey stomachs are full to drop the load off.
Step 3: Nectar Passed from Worker Bees to House Bees
Back at the hive, bees referred to as the house bees wait
for the foraging worker bees to return. The worker bees pass the nectar to the
waiting bees so that the honey-making process can start. As the nectar is
chewed and passed from bee to bee, enzymes change its pH and other chemical
properties.
The mixture of nectar and enzyme at this stage, however,
contains too much water to be stored over the winter. Therefore, the bees have
to work on drying it out.
Step 3: Honey Dehydration
