What is Honey ?
Honey bees collect their nectar from flowers. Only honey bees have the ability to change nectar into honey. Nectar has high moisture content. The honey bees use their wings to fan the nectar to evaporate the excess moisture. Upon completion of the dehydration process and adding enzymes to the nectar, honey becomes the by-product of the flower nectar. Honey has a complex chemical composition that varies depending on the botanical source. Its colour and flavour varies based on the nectar the bees collect.
How Do Bees Make Honey?
At sunrise, honey bees leave the hive to scout for nectar over a three to five-kilometre radius from the hive. Some return to the nectar sources found during the previous day. Other bees will forage new areas to pick up nectar from new sources. Honey bees have been found to have a sense of smell 90 times more sensitive than that of a human.
Once nectar is detected, honey bees descend on the blossoms to draw out the nectar from the flowers with their proboscis (a hollow straw-like tongue). The nectar is stored in the honey stomach. A honey bee visits numerous flowers to fill its stomach. While foraging for nectar, the honey bees inevitably come into contact with the pollen grains on the stamens of the flowers. In doing so, the honey bees help to pollinate the flowers. The body of the honey bees is covered in pollen grains when they fly from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollinating the flowers.
The pollen grains provide valuable mineral and protein food for the larvae back in the brood chamber of the hive. The honey bees cleverly pack the pollen grains on the back legs. When loaded with nectar and pollen grains, the honey bees head back to their hive.
Upon reaching the hive, the honey bees give their bounty to the colony. Pollens are dropped off and stored in order to feed the brood. The nectar stored in the honey bees stomach is transferred to other honey bees from tongue to tongue. Each time the nectar is transferred or stored in the honey bees stomach, enzymes are added to the nectar.
The enzymes added help to enhance the food value of the honey. The honey bees consume some of the nectar for their own needs and the rest is stored in the honey comb for future needs of the colony. Information about the nectar source, the direction and the distance is shared with other worker bees so that more worker bees know where to find the nectar without wasting previous time and effort. Once armed with the information, the honey bees can zoom in on the nectar source with pinpoint accuracy as though they were guided by an internal and personal GPS. How amazing!
The next step is for the nectar to be broken down into simple sugars to be stored inside the honeycomb. The moisture content of the nectar at this stage is very high and fermentation can take place. To preserve the nectar, the worker bees make use of their wings to vigorously fan to evaporate the moisture to an acceptable level so that fermentation cannot take place.
The design of the honeycomb and constant fanning of the bees’ wings causes evaporation, creating a sweet liquid. This liquid is now honey and can be safely stored and capped for future use. Capped honey is said to be ‘ripe’ and can be extracted and marketed for honey lovers.
A prudent beekeeper will leave sufficient honey in the hive so that the honey bees can use in times of nectar shortage.