Eli5: How is honey made by bees?

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Eli5: How is honey made by bees?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Bees suck up nectar (sugar water made in flowering plants) from flowers. Go back to their hive and throw it up in a wax bowl. Cover it with more wax. People come take it a couple days later, after the hive of bees have filled up a bunch of these wax bowls.

Anonymous 0 Comments

After collecting nectar, they create enzymes that change the structure of the sugar and then dehydrate it in their hives until it becomes honey.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Nectar is about 95-98%water. Honey with 20% or more will ferment and spoil. Honeybees dehydrate the nectar to less than 20%, usually around 18% before sealing it up in comb.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Okay, wait, if honey is made from nectar then what are they doing with all the pollen?

Anonymous 0 Comments

So how do they make the wax then?

Anonymous 0 Comments

What do the bees do with the honey? (When humans take it, are they taking their food supply…?)

Anonymous 0 Comments

Haven’t you seen Bee Movie?

Anonymous 0 Comments

Beekeeper checking in – lots of info, some correct, some not

Bees collect nectar in a honey crop. When they get back they pass the honey to an intermediary bee who takes it to the comb. During the time the nectar is in the honey crop it is being exposed to enzymes. Bees can fan the nectar once it is in comb. It is not consider honey until the water content is about 17% and the bees cap it with wax

Anonymous 0 Comments

So, if a beekeeper keeps stealing the supply. Do they not starve in winter?