We all know bees collect pollen but how is it made into sweet gold honey? Also, is the only reason why people haven’t made a synthetic version is because it’s easier to have the bees do it for us?
In: Biology
If I remember correctly, it’s something like this:
1) The bees eat the nectar (for honey) and collect some pollen (proteins for babies).
2) They fly back to the hive. They dance a bit to tell the other bees about the sweet ass flowers they just found.
3) They start puking the nectar into the ‘housekeeping’ bees’ mouths. The housekeepers will then puke into each others’ mouths so that their enzymes can do their thing. A conga line of puke if you will.
4) Once they are done passing it around, they puke the stuff into the combs.
5) Lastly, the housekeepers will fan the soon-to-be-honey with their wings to evaporate what water remains and it should then be honey.
Honey is bee vomit. Mead is bee vomit that’s then eaten by yeast, which poops out alcohol.
Nature. It’s disgusting. But delicious.
Related question and sorry if it’s already been asked but how is honeycomb made by the bees?
There have been several recent experiments/studies done on this…
Much of the big business honey you buy in the supermarket is actually mostly corn syrup.
Not “synthetic”, but not real, either, and certainly not with any of the health benefits.
Buy from small batches. Buy from local beekeepers.
Mmmmm, honey! My parents have a small fruit farm in Mexico, they get a ton of honey throughout the year. They always bring me a liter of honey when they visit in the states. That stuff is like liquid gold, so good!
My question is how does the honey taste change based on what fruit is currently in season? I assume nectar taste varies based on flower?
Popping in to add that there are around 20,000 different bee species in the world! We tend to equate “bee” with the western honey bee (*Apis mellifera*), but not all bees make honey [1] or live in groups (e.g. hives or colonies) [2].
[1] Some stingless bees also produce honey (though it’s different from honey bee honey) and are kept commercially in tropical/subtropical regions.
[2] Bumble bees are usually social, as are several other bees in the same family! Many bees are solitary and/or stingless, unlike honey bees.
(Edited for clarity and formatting)
This is kind of irrelevant, but super interesting. As a biochem student, I have never had an interest in insects or such. I took a Honey Bee course (as an easy elective) and I was amazed. I would say bees are the most interesting and most intelligent creatures you could ever imagine. You should look into how they communicate. It is beyond insane. Within a 1 minute little dance, they are able to communicate to the other forager bees EXACTLY where a food source (pollen/nectar is) – It has been proven that the exact coordinates and distance can be interpreted. I could go on about this forever but search up how much information can be interpreted from a bee’s dance; it’s crazy!
Also – it would be next to impossible for us to create our own honey because you require nectar – which would be incredibly difficult for humans to obtain.
**Edit:** I have created a [link](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KpZh8dr5nEfLmJipozU6oURYqeyleIYs?usp=sharing) – This has my class notes, the textbook we used (excuse the strange formatting) and a couple of other books we looked at which are pretty interesting. Happy reading!
No, pollen is for making bee bread, a different sort of bee food.
Bees make honey by collecting a sugary juice called nectar from the blossom by sucking it out with their tongues. They store it in what’s called their honey stomach, which is different from their food stomach.
When they have a full load, they fly back to the hive. There, they pass it on through their mouths to other worker bees who chew it for about half an hour. It’s passed from bee to bee, until it gradually turns into honey. The bees store it in honeycomb cells after they fan it with their wings to make it dry out and become more sticky. When it’s ready, they seal the cell with a wax lid to keep it clean.
It’s a complicated physical and chemical process. If you make “synthetic honey”, you’re going to have a hard time convincing folks its a replacement for the “natural”, “raw” food that the bees make.
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