Hey ELI5! I’ve always been curious about how bees are able to make honey. I know they collect something from flowers, but what exactly happens after that? How does what they collect turn into the honey we eat? Could someone explain this process in a simple way? Thanks!
In: Biology
They drink sugar water (nectar) off of flowers then brew it in their stomach for awhile before barfing it back up as honey. Chemistry is involved, I’m told.
Flowers produce a sugar-rich fluid called nectar that bees are attracted to, as a means to encourage bees and other insects to pollinate. The bee extracts nectar from many flowers stores that nectar in a specialized internal sac call “The Honey Stomach” and returns to the hive, where they regurgitate the nectar into a cell made of wax. Bees then ingest this nectar into their honey stomachs, which contain specialized enzymes to facilitate the process of transforming the nectar into honey, over and over. They also use their wings to fan the wax cells to evaporate some of the water content, concentrating the sugars.
The end result, which is very long-lasting, is what we call honey. The tl;dr is that bees use enzymes to break down and reform sugars, and reduce the water content of nectar, to produce honey. The reason is that lower water content and higher sugar content inhibits bacterial and fungal growth, and makes it more nutritious per gram.
true eli5 fashion:
they monch monch monch on some yummy flower water but then they feel a little woozy from eating too much and barf it back up, but by then it already mixed with their stomach contents and turned it into what we call honey.
Basically drink the Nectar when they go back to the hive some of the pollen stuck on them as well. They get mixed intentionally or not I’m not sure. They mix wax combs put the Nectar in there and their body heat drys it out to thicken it. . If you want to try some nectar find a honeysuckle flower they have these long I don’t know what you call them strings that come out that have this light sweet syrup in them.
What would the bees do if humans didn’t make hives for them?
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