Bees make honey from flower nectar! 🏵️ They fly from flower to flower, collect sweet nectar with their tongues, and store it in their special honey stomachs. When they return to the hive, they pass the nectar to other bees who chew it and spread it in the honeycomb. Then, they fan it with their wings to make it thick and sticky. That's how honey is made! 🍯
Bees make honey in a fascinating way! 🐝 First, worker bees collect nectar from flowers using their long tongues. The nectar mixes with enzymes in their honey stomachs, which start turning it into honey. Back at the hive, they pass the nectar to house bees, who chew it and spread it into honeycomb cells. Then, they fan it with their wings to evaporate extra water, making the honey thick and sweet. Finally, they seal the honeycomb with wax to keep it fresh! 🍯
Bees visit millions of flowers to make just one jar of honey—that’s a lot of hard work!
Honey production is a complex and efficient process perfected by bees over millions of years! Here’s how it works:
Worker bees fly up to 5 miles to find flowers. They use their proboscis (a straw-like tongue) to suck up nectar, storing it in their honey stomach (separate from their food stomach). Enzymes like invertase begin breaking down the nectar’s complex sugars into simpler ones.
Back at the hive, bees pass the nectar to house bees, who chew it for about 30 minutes, adding more enzymes. The nectar is then deposited into honeycomb cells.
Bees fan the nectar with their wings to reduce its water content from ~70% to ~18%. This thickens it into honey, which they seal with beeswax to prevent fermentation.
Fun fact: A single bee visits 50–100 flowers per trip and makes about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. A hive collectively flies ~55,000 miles to make 1 pound of honey! 🌍