How Bees Produce Honey

Imagine that you are hiking in a mountain, and you hear something buzzing around your ears. You look around and see a bee or maybe more than one and a beehive. Would you get terrified and scream? I bet most of us would. It’s paradoxical that some of us, including me, are afraid of bees but fond of sweet honey. Honey is such a wonderful and sweet thing that every beverage would be better with some in it. However, have you ever wondered how honeybees produce honey? In the following three paragraphs, I’m going to introduce the three steps of bees’ fascinating honey making.

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In the first step, foraging worker bees collect nectar. As the weather gets warmer, the bees begin to forage on flowers for the sugary liquid called nectar. The foraging worker bees have to work very hard, traveling for nectar for their whole life. They fly 55,000 miles to produce only a pound of honey. As bees suck the nectar from the flowers with their arthropod mouthparts (see image 1), the sweet liquid would be stored in their “special honey stomach”. Speaking of “stomach,” one might wonder that if bees have to fly such a distance, how do they eat? How do they replenish energy? If foraging bees are hungry, they open a valve in the nectar stomach and a portion of the payload passes through to their own stomachs can be converted to energy for their own needs. Once finish collecting nectar, bees would take it back to the hive in readiness for the indoor bees.

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In the second step, the indoor bees begin their process of honey forming. Nectar would be delivered to one of the indoor bees and then passed mouth-to-mouth from bee-to-bee until its moisture contents are reduced (see image 2). Glands that bees possess secrete an enzyme, known as the “invertase.” The nectar is pretty much like sugar water and therefore is perishable, but the invertase helps break that sucrose down into simpler sugar molecules, glucose and fructose, eventually transforming it into something that will hold up in long-term storage; therefore, back in the beehive, the nectar is passed from one bee to another, further mixing the nectar with the invertase, and then be turned into honey.

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In the final step, bees make storages by fanning the honey dry and adding a layer of wax on it. Moving on to the final process, sweet honey is almost done. After the nectar is mixed up with the invertase and become honey, bees place it in storage cells, which are called honeycombs (see image 3). The honey stored initially in the cells is still a bit wet, so the bees fan their wings over it, which helps the water to evaporate and the honey to get dryer. After some time, the water content is reduced from 20% to around 17%. Once the honey is ready, bees add a layer of bee wax on it. The process is called “capping the cells (see image 4).” They apply the wax on the combs nicely and tidily, and here we are! The honey is all set; ready to be harvested.

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The process of honey making includes collecting nectar from flowers, mixing nectar with an enzyme, as well as fanning and waxing. As a person who falls for honey, I find the honey-making work fascinating and interesting. It is magical that nectar from mother nature could be turned into the honey we eat. Honey’s color, aroma, and taste can vary in a subtle way if the nectar was from different kinds of flowers; however, something that never changes is that honey tastes amazing and it is valuable.

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References

Australian Honey Bee Industry Council. World of Honey: How Bees Make Honey. Retrieved from https://honeybee.org.au/education/wonderful-world-of-honey/how-bees-make-honey/

 

BuzzAboutBees.net. Honey & Pollen: How Do Bees Make Honey? Retrieved from https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/how-do-bees-make-honey.html

 

Elizabeth Palermo. (2013). What Is Honey? Retrieved from

https://www.livescience.com/37611-what-is-honey-honeybees.html

 

VoiceTube. (2019). Why (and How) Do Bees Make Honey? Retrieved from

https://tw.voicetube.com/videos/73816