How Bees Make That Sweet Gold Nectar
By Kayla Kleven| June 7, 2019
Picture this, you wake up in the morning and you are hungry. All you want is some peanut butter and honey toast. Do you ever wonder where that sweat gold goodness comes from? It comes from bees and the complex process they go through to make sure that you can get your peanut butter and honey toast fix in the morning.
Bees are complex creatures and they have a hierarchy in their hives. The gives have a queen, drones and worker bees. According to big island bees, “Each of our hives each has about 50,000 bees. Each hive has one queen, and 100 female worker bees for every male drone bee. The queen’s only job is to lay eggs and a drone’s job is to mate with the queen. The worker bees are responsible for everything else: gathering nectar, guarding the hive and honey, caring for the queen and larvae, keeping the hive clean, and producing honey.”
The hive is a complex place and it is where the queen bees are born, they eat special food their whole lives and the worker bees eat a different combination of foods to make sure that they are equipped to handle the honey making process. The type of food that the queen bees eat is called royal jelly and they eat that who lives. Worker bees eat substance called bee bread this is a combination of pollen and honey; they are switched to this after a few days of eating royal jelly.
Do you ever wonder how bees communicate to find their food to make honey?
According to Prairie Public Broadcasting the process looks something like this: bees dance and how they dance, and the dance indicates where the food is located.
First: The bee walks in a straight line before repeating in a figure eight motion.
Second: Depending on how long the line is lets the other bees know how far away the honey is.
Third: The bee will either move left, right or straight according to the sun and that will the bees know which direction the food is located in.
Last: Depending on how fast the bee is moving its back tail lets the bees know how good the food is.
The Honey Making process
According to Prairie Public Broadcasting, bees can make over 50 Kilograms of honey in a single year.
Step 1: Honey is made from nectar; bees use their tongues to sip up nectar from the flower.
Step 2: The nectar goes into one of two stomachs.
Step 3: Digestive enzymes start working on the way back to the hive.
Step 4: The bee will start a vomiting chain with the other bees to add more digestive enzymes to the honey.
Step 5: This process turns the honey into sucrose and glucose enzymes.
Step 6: The Bees beat their wings and create an air current, when putting it into the hive because the honey is still pretty watery.
Step 7: The bees seal the honey come with beeswax.
This creates the honey and honey can last for years and stay fresh and not spoil. Therefore honey on yourself at home is able to have a long shelf life.
Bees are incredible creatures and now you have a little more in site as to wear your morning peanut putter and honey toast breakfast comes from.
