how do bees make honey exactly?
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Bees have two stomachs, one for digestion, and one to store nectar. They eat the nectar from a flower and it goes into their “honey stomach” where there are special enzymes that change the nectar into honey. An enzyme is a special protein interacts with molecules and changes them. In this case breaking down the sugars in the nectar into honey.
When worker bees who harvest the nectar then take it to the hive and vomit the nectar/honey into a honeycomb hex, and then other bees in the hive will drink it up and regurgitate it over and over to churn it. Then they will use their wings to cool it down in the final stage.
Kind of a weird process to think about, but many biological processes transform the food we eat. Honey just do happens to be made inside a bee’s stomach.
Has there ever been another species besides bees known to make honey?
While there’s a common belief that bees have a special stomach for nectar, tbat’s incorrect: it’s their stomach, not some other less offensive thing, although it’s usually referred to as the “crop”. The production of honey involves a chemical and a physical process.
The chemical process starts when the worker bee collects nectar and adds some enzymes before swallowing it, mainly invertase that splits sucrose into glucose and fructose. When the bee arrives back at the hive, she regurgitates the partially processed nectar to a waiting house bee who swallows the nectar adding more enzymes. This passing on of the nectar happens a few times, with some water being removed at each step.
Eventually the physical process takes over when the focus is on concentrating the nectar which started as around 80% water. It is now a bit more concentrated, and it’s hung out to dry across a few cells. The evaporation of water continues until eventually the water content is less than 20%, at which point it’s packed into cells as ripe honey.
It’s eventually capped with wax. Some bees cap honey with a little air pocket under the capping, making the honey comb appear white, while others don’t, making the capping appear wet.
Ultimately honey is bee vomit – in fact, it’s been eaten & regurgitated a number of times by multiple bees. However the bee’s crop connects to the proventriculous which is an active valve and filter, removing pollen from the nectar and passing it on to the bee’s digestive system.
There is another kind of honey called honeydew honey – it’s extremely dark, sometimes completely black. This is made when the bees collect honeydew, essentially the poop of aphids. The result is this striking honey, effectively vomited up aphid poop.
Honey itself is around 80% sugars, mainly glucose and fructose with some other sugars mixed in. The ratio of glucose to fructose determines how fast the honey crystallises, with high glucose causing an early crystallisation. So Canola/rapeseed crystallises quickly and ivy crystallises almost immediately, indicating that these have a high concentration of glucose.
Bees eat a ‘syrup’ that comes from flowers. They all it up and than throw it up into the hive. Then they flap their wings to dry it up a bit to make honey.
Honey is bee vomit essentially.
And where do bees get the wax from?
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Basically bees don’t make honey so much as they remove water. If you feed bees sugar water the “honey” is terrible .
Bees are natures bulemics. They go out and eat all this nectar, and then go back to the hive and see the other ‘skinny’ bees and throw up. The vomit is kinda sticky, so they fan it until most of the water evaporates. Then they go out and do it again. And again. Like an entire bees lifetime of vomit is about 1/3 of a teaspoon. We call it honey and, fun fact, it never goes bad.
Honey is bee vomit. The most awesome sweet substance, next to agave, is bee vomit. That’s how honey is made. There: ELI5.
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