Why do bees collect honey? How and why do bees make honey? How honey is made from nectar

Any person from an early age knows what honey is and that it has a whole range of beneficial properties. At the same time, few people are interested in how honey is made by bees, what it consists of, or why the insects themselves need it. The product sold in stores is produced exclusively by bees (hornets and wasps also collect honey).

Bee honey is a syrup-like, sweet-tasting substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of various plants. Essentially, this delicacy is a solution of a large amount of carbohydrates in water: it is characterized by a high content of sucrose, glucose and fructose, as well as oligosaccharides. An important role here also belongs to enzymes - hydrolases, along with vitamins K, B, H, E, and minerals necessary for health such as potassium, sodium, calcium, iron, magnesium, etc.

How do bees produce honey?

The bee is the only insect that produces food suitable for humans. If you are wondering what types of honey bees do not collect, then the answer is: as mentioned earlier, there are three types of insects that produce honey - bees, hornets and wasps. Bees collect nectar from any honey plant. In the spring, during the honey-bearing season, you can watch bees collecting honey: all day, from morning to evening, winged “hard workers” fly from one flower to another in search of sweet nectar, which will later be turned into a healing product. Bee colonies are quite large and can number up to 60 thousand individuals.

They are composed of insects with the following specializations:

1. uterus;
2. host bees;
3. drones;
4. scouts;
5. pickers.

What do bees do:

• extract nectar and deliver it to the hive;
• explore new sources of nectar;
• produce wax and build honeycombs, which serve as a reservoir for storing the sweet product;
• distribute honey into honeycomb cells;
• protect honey reserves, queen and larvae;
• They raise new individuals for honey collection next season.

Nectar sources

Nectar is obtained by bees from honey-bearing plants, these can be flowers, trees and shrubs.

Bees begin to work in early spring, when the first inflorescences bloom, and do not stop working until the very last days of autumn.

Perennial honey plants

There are perennial honey grasses that are the most productive for bees in terms of nectar collection, and many of them deserve targeted introduction into cultivation through special sowing of fields. The flowers of such plants are the best honey plants for bees, and there are many of them in our country. The first on the list of such promising honey plants is sweet clover.

Characteristic features of sweet clover honey:

1. persistent floral aroma;
2. light vanilla taste and transparent consistency that does not crystallize for a long time;
3. the color is most often white, sometimes there may be an amber tint.

Another great honey plant is the porphyry sainfoin.

Honey of this variety has the following distinctive features:

• transparency and delicate aroma;
• light amber color;
• slow crystallization;
• rich pleasant taste.

Also among perennial plants, rouge, catnip and lemon balm have high melliferous qualities.

Flowers that attract bees

If you want to attract honey insects, and the question arises what flowers bees like, then you need to plant the following flowers in your local area: coreopsis, aster, clover, crocus, cosmos, dahlia, mallow, foxglove, hyacinth, poppy, marigold, rose, sunflower , snowdrop or zinnia.

In the spring, during honey collection, a bee flies out of the hive in search of a source of food, the scout collects a little nectar and returns back. Upon returning, the insect performs a peculiar dance, which explains to the collectors the location of the honey plant. After this, a huge swarm of foraging bees sets off to collect nectar. Having reached the right place, the furry “hard workers” use their proboscis to collect nectar into the oral cavity, where it, combined with a special secretion from saliva, is enriched with enzymes that give the nectar thickness, thereby beginning its transformation into a favorite delicacy for many.

Bees have two stomachs: one for feeding, the other for collecting nectar. The stomach capacity is about 70 mg, and to fill it to the top, it is necessary to fly around more than one and a half thousand flowers. Having collected the required amount of nectar, the collecting bees deliver it to the hive, where they pass it on to the receivers. The complex process of how bees make honey takes place over ten days, involving thousands of insects of different ages filling the honeycombs with honey, which must ripen there.

How exactly is honey produced?

The nectar brought by the foragers is used by worker bees for several needs: one part of it is processed into honey, and the other is used as food for the larvae. The way bees make honey is a complex, long and somewhat unique process.

Below are all the stages of how bees produce honey in general terms:

In one honey harvesting season, a bee colony can produce up to two hundred kilograms of this useful product.

Crystallization is affected by:

• ambient temperature;
• the region in which the honey is collected;
• honey plant.

Honeycomb

On the question of what honeycombs are in bees, these are bee buildings that serve to store food supplies and raise offspring; they are also a nest for the bee family. Wax and bee bread, from which bees' honeycombs are made, are valuable substances that are used in the treatment of many diseases, as well as in the production of natural candles. Honeycombs have a cell structure in the form of hexagonal prisms located on both sides of a common concentration, which can be organized artificially.

Why do bees need honey?

The meaning of why bees make honey, laid down by nature, is to store food, and honey-bearing herbs serve as its source for bees.

A substantial supply of food is the key to a successful winter: if a colony of bees starves and is unable to maintain normal life activities, it will die or by spring it will be weakened and will not be able to fully carry out summer honey collection. You can learn more about preparing bees for winter.

Bees living in apiaries produce honey in much larger quantities than is necessary for food. This is explained simply: beekeepers additionally stimulate insects to produce a sweet delicacy, using honey plants sown next to the apiary specifically for bees, and also from time to time freeing the hives from honeycombs with honey. Insects, in turn, stock up intensively, thinking that there are not enough supplies to survive the winter.

Of course, bees prepare honey for themselves, but the taste and smell of honey attracts various animals - from wild boars and bears to martens and ants. A person also has a great desire to enjoy aromatic sweet honey.

It is not only a tasty and healthy food product, but also a panacea for numerous diseases. Containing almost the entire periodic table, it helps us heal from various ailments, ranging from colds to more serious ones. This valuable product is part of many folk remedies for improving the health of both the whole body and individual organs. How delicious are pancakes with honey! And the honey cake will not leave anyone indifferent! Many people have never thought about how bees make honey, and it is an interesting process!

Why do bees make honey? The bee family is quite numerous. It consists of many thousands of individuals that need to feed themselves during the long winter. All summer, bees, tirelessly, or rather their wings, flutter from flower to flower, collecting sweet nectar and pollen, from which honey and beebread are then made. Despite the fact that most of the natural product is taken by humans, the bees have more than enough to feed what is left, because the workers harvest many times more of it than they need.

In winter, it supports the bee family, saturating it with the carbohydrates and water that insects need so much. Beebread replaces protein, which is no less important in the bee diet, therefore, the beekeeper needs to leave enough of these products in the hive so that the family can feed itself during the long and cold winter. Moreover, during this period, hairy honey plants do not sleep, like many other types of insects.

Why do bees need honey? Microelements and vitamins, which are present in huge quantities, allow insects to fully develop and exist. And also, the more nectar a bee collects and delivers to the hive, the more wax it will secrete, which is an integral part of the hive itself, since it is from wax that the honeycombs in which honey is stored are created.

Some careless beekeepers take the entire collection of working bees from the hives and feed them with sugar syrup, which is extremely undesirable to do, since sugar syrup does not contain so many useful substances, and honey is a complete food product for bees.

Process of honey production by bees

Before they begin collecting nectar and producing honey, insects must make honeycombs where the nectar will be stored and where the finished product will be stored. Honeycombs are hexagonal cells made of wax. They are intended not only for making and storing “sweet gold”, but also for laying eggs and raising offspring.

How do bees make honey? Many people think that the bees immediately take this sweet product from the flower and carry it to the hive, but this is not so. The process of making honey is quite complicated. First, scout bees fly to different places in search of suitable flowers and plants, and then return to the hive and, using a special dance, inform the foraging insects about the location of the treasured lands.

How do bees collect nectar? Working bees collect nectar with their proboscis, flying from plant to plant, and put it in special bags located on the abdomen, while simultaneously treating it with their own saliva, which is an enzyme for breaking down sugar. This is how honey production begins.

Having collected and processed as much nectar as one small bee can carry, she transports it to the hive and returns back, covering an area of ​​12 hectares in a day.

How is honey made further? A worker bee, returning with a bribe, gives it to another who works in the hive. She absorbs it and continues further fermentation, then places it in the lower part of the cells, where excess moisture evaporates. This nectar will be transferred from one cell to another many times, during which a complex process of preparing honey occurs, the ripening time of which from the moment the nectar is delivered to the hive is 10 days. Insects fill the cells of the honeycomb with the finished product and seal them with wax. Thus, the product can be stored for a very long time without losing its qualities.

I would like to note that to produce honey, it is necessary to maintain a certain temperature in the hive, which is achieved through artificial ventilation. Bees create it by vigorously flapping their wings.

We learned how bees produce honey, but how much nectar one little flyer can collect will depend on many things.

First of all, this is a weather factor. In bad weather, bad weather and rain, insects will not fly and collect nectar. Drought also plays an important role. If the weather is dry, then there will be much fewer honey plants, and accordingly, the amount of nectar collected will be small.

When the distance from the place of accumulation of honey plants to the location of the hive is large, the bee will also not bring much nectar; she will eat a fourth of it herself to maintain strength. To make 1 kg of honey, bees need to collect 4 kg of nectar, while flying around more than a million flowers. Over the entire season, the bee family produces 150 kg of sweet delicacy, half of which it spends on itself.

Having learned what honey is and how this amazing creation of nature is obtained, I would like to add about its unique properties. This product comes in two types:

• floral;
• honeydew.

The first type is produced from nectar collected from honey plants. It can contain up to seven different types of sugars. Its taste directly depends on the type of plant and external factors - as soon as the flowering process begins, the amount of nectar is maximum, and after pollination it decreases; with increased air humidity, the nectar is less sweet and vice versa.

Honeydew is made from a sweet liquid of animal origin, which is a waste product of other insects that feed on the juice and nectar of plants and flowers.

Honey of the second type is much healthier than the first for humans, as it contains more amino acids, organic acids, mineral and nitrogenous substances, as well as various enzymes, but this product is not suitable for feeding the bee family, since it contains a large amount of mineral salts that are harmful. insects.

This sweet bee product has unique healing properties. It calms, has a beneficial effect on metabolism, and improves immunity. He has no equal in the treatment of colds and viral diseases, stomach and duodenal ulcers. Honey has wound-healing and bactericidal properties. It is used in cosmetics for skin and hair care. You can go on and on about the advantages and benefits of “sweet gold”.

By collecting nectar, bees not only produce honey, but also pollinate plants, transferring pollen from one flower to another, thereby bringing great benefits to agriculture. Without these striped workers there would be no harvest in the fields and gardens. The diligence and enormous hard work of these amazing insects, which are a unique miracle of Mother Nature herself and an example for many people, are simply amazing. Bees and honey are a unique gift from nature to man, which should be appreciated.

How do bees make honey? Collection process and useful properties - video

What do bees collect - pollen or nectar? Each bee, going to field work, performs a whole range of actions, collecting pollen and nectar. And at certain times, special bees also fly out to collect resin for the production of propolis.

How does a bee behave on a flower?

Each bee flies in search of nectar and pollen, guided by color. It is for such organisms that plants spend their resources. After all, a flower is a transformed shoot with leaves. The petals and other parts of the flower evolved from the leaves, losing the ability to photosynthesize. Moreover, nectar is produced solely to attract pollinators, primarily insects. The most valuable workers are bees and bumblebees. They drink nectar and collect pollen, flying from flower to flower. This is how genetic information is transferred between plants.

The first thing a bee does on a flower is put its head inside it. Since this insect does not have a long proboscis, it has to part the petals and lick a drop of nectar. After this, the insect moves to another flower, repeating the entire process. Having filled its nectar reservoirs, the bee begins to deal with pollen.

Many people are interested in the question: how do bees collect pollen? This is really a very interesting process. It happens as follows.

• Sitting on the stamens, the insect picks up pollen grains, which move from the body to special brushes on the middle legs.
• After this, the brushes are compressed, and the pollen grains are dragged onto the hind legs.
• The next step is the process of combing both hind legs with a special tooth comb, which is located on the lower leg. This is how the pollen ball is formed.
• The insect, making forward movements with its paws, moves this lump into a basket - a depression in the insect's lower leg. The pollen ball is held in the basket by special hairs.

When the bee colony worker is fully loaded, he can fly home. There, this bee transfers nectar and pollen to the receiving bees, who conduct production, providing the hive with everything it needs.

What happens to the pollen in the hive?

It is not for nothing that bees are divided into professions. Their work is too varied and really requires specialization. Pollen is collected in order to create bee bread, that is, bee bread. The processing of pollen, or rather pollen, occurs under anaerobic conditions with the help of salivary enzymes, special yeast, and some types of bacteria. Flower pollen, carried by the bee on its hind legs, undergoes primary processing at the collection stage as the insect uses its saliva to create a dense bolus.

Further production is carried out by bees who specialize in internal work. As a result of complex processes, the pollen is completely transformed into beebread, folded into honeycomb cells, and then clogged with wax. This is how the bee colony provides itself with food for the long winter. Bee bread and honey can feed not only the inhabitants of the hive, but also pamper people with a healthy product.

Pollen production and humans

In one “flight” one insect can transfer up to 50 mg of pollen. Is it a lot or a little? And how much product can be collected from one hive in the form of pollen or beebread?

Experts have calculated that in one season a full-fledged bee family can collect 55 kg of pollen. If you correctly calculate the possibilities, then this will be enough to feed a family of bees and still leave for human needs.

An average family collects 1-2 kg of pollen per day under good conditions. At the same time, bees weighing 1.5 kg usually consume only 15-20 kg of beebread per year.

If it is clear how much pollen these insects carry, and it is known how much they eat during the winter, then perhaps it is possible to calculate the amount of product taken from one bee colony?

A standard family should consume 20 kg of pollen per year. At the same time, the average family spends 16.6 kg of bee bread per year on feeding young bees. This means that the amount of excess pollen is 12-15 kg. This is exactly how much a zealous hive owner can take from his charges.

The question arises - why do these insects fly so often for pollen if they actually don’t need so much? Everything is explained very simply. Firstly, there is a powerful instinct that makes the bee fly all the time for food, no matter how full the bins are. Secondly, such a lot of food always leads to the dispersal of the family, that is, to swarming, so the bees act on the principle that there is never too much food in the hive. Third, man continually withdraws produce during the harvest season. This stimulates insects to send out a troop of foragers in search of new sources of floral resources.

All beekeeping rests on these three reasons for the formation of excess food resources in the hive.

Nectar and honey - two facets of one process

Nestar and honey - what is the difference between these products? And one more question - do bees just accumulate nectar or do something else with it?

In these insects, the collected resource is necessarily processed. Nectar is no exception to this rule.

The production begins with the scout bees finding a cluster of honey plants and telling all their sisters about it in the language of dance. After this, a detachment of collectors is sent out, which collects everything that can be used to make supplies for the winter and food for the whole family. Having arrived at the hive, the collectors hand over the cargo to the receivers, who must correctly place the nectar in the honeycombs and provide conditions for its processing.

Honey production consists of several stages, which are implemented as follows.

1. Nectar cannot be stored for long because it contains a lot of water and sugar. This is the ideal environment for fermentation. For this reason, excess water is first removed from the nectar. Initially, when the nectar begins to collect, it contains 50% water. In order for the water to evaporate and the sugars to remain, honey-producing bees package the semi-finished product into honeycombs. In this case, only part of the cell is filled. Such honeycombs are subject to increased ventilation, which promotes water evaporation.
2. After some of the water has left the nectar, the honey production process itself begins. To do this, the enzyme invertase is introduced into slightly dehydrated nectar. This is necessary in order to convert sugars into fructose and glucose. The process of introducing the enzyme occurs as follows: bees absorb future honey with the help of a proboscis into a special honey sac. This organ is completely permeated with blood vessels that provide an increased amount of oxygen and other necessary substances. The honey crop also contains glands that produce the necessary enzyme. It is in this goiter that honey is created. Nectar, being in an oxygen environment, undergoes a process of hydrolysis under the influence of enzymes.
3. Having supplied the nectar with enzymes, the bee returns it back to the honeycomb, where the processes of transformation of the substrate continue. After their completion, a product called honey is formed, which contains 75% fructose and glucose. Sugar is still present in the product, but in an amount of 4%.
4. When the honey is finally ready, it is placed in the cells of the honeycomb and sealed with wax. Such insulation saves the reserves from penetration by those who want to eat them, but the main thing is that the honey is not exposed to air, which ensures its safety.

What is a bee family like? This is a community of individuals producing food and building materials. After all, when flying out to work in the field, a bee collects only three types of resources: nectar, pollen and resin. After undergoing production in the hive, these resources turn into honey, bee bread, propolis and wax. This is for the bees. A person takes much more from the hive - honey, pollen, beebread, wax, propolis, milk, poison and death.

Here we cannot help but dwell on the role of bees in the life of humans and humans in the lives of bees. There are many species of wild bees in nature. And they all perform a very important mission - they pollinate plants. However, there have never been so many of these insects in nature. By increasing their number, man stimulated the development of plants. True, there is also an opinion that cultivated bees are competitors of wild species, displacing them from ecological niches. This ecological process certainly exists, and the decline of biodiversity through cultivated bees must be acknowledged. However, most apiaries are located in zones of anthropogenic transformation of ecosystems, where wild bees have been exterminated for completely different reasons.

Bees are unique creatures. Small insects have managed to organize the production of products that can be called one of a kind. At least man has never been able to synthesize any of them.

Humanity has known about honey as a food product for decades. Honey products are considered one of the oldest produced by honey bees. Without knowing how honey is made, it is impossible to appreciate it. It should be taken into account that honey processing is largely associated with changes in the components and beneficial properties of flower and honeydew nectars. Read more about how bees collect honey and the process of processing it.

How bees make honey

Many people are mistaken in believing that bees, collecting nectar, bring finished products to the hive. For some, honey is produced by beekeepers. But all this is false information. How honey is produced can be learned by understanding the importance of each bee in the swarm.

It is difficult to imagine that a separate autonomous state can gather inside houses with striped insects, in which there is a government and each unit has its own purpose. The main part of their life is spent collecting; they must obtain food for the entire bee city.

With the arrival of spring, waking up from winter hibernation, minke whales begin to take care of the required amount of nectarines. First of all, it is important to get rid of the fecal deposits accumulated during the cold weather. As soon as the air warms up to 13 degrees, the insects make their first flights over the territory, which are actually called cleaning flights. The first flight is not to collect pollen.

On a note! To begin collecting pollen, the air temperature must warm up to no less than 15-17 degrees. Until this moment, the honeycombs are prepared, the hives are cleaned of dirt and the remains of dead striped friends.

It has a striped state and its own scouts. Such a bee explores the area and notifies the honey plants when the plant is ripe and needs to get ready for work. Research flights take place daily. When the swarm first flies out, scouts lead them to the source of pollen. At this moment, the receptionists remain in the houses, waiting for the nectar, because they are the ones who receive the honey and distribute it to the honeycombs.

The direct process of how honey is produced by bees consists of several stages. The breadwinners pass the collected nectar to the receiving bees. Afterwards, the insects begin to directly produce the honey product.

Bee collecting pollen

The taken pollen contains a lot of sugars, carbohydrates, vitamins, amino acids and other things. During transmission, enzymes secreted by the mandibular glands of striped insects are added to the main components. Added enzymes promote the appearance of maltose and additional sugars and reduce the amount of moisture contained. Now the striped receivers begin to compact the comb compartments, continuing to dehydrate the product, supplementing with the necessary elements and high temperatures of the hives. Next, the filled cells are preserved with wax stoppers, from which a protective vacuum should be obtained. This is how the product continues to mature. When sealing the cells, the bees inject substances that are natural preservatives. In turn, the honey remains under an airtight wax lid, so air and liquid do not enter there. Thus, the delicacy is preserved for a long period.

How is honey formed?

Honey production is a long and complex process. To understand how bees make honey, it’s worth delving a little deeper into the structure of the insect. Stopping on plants, striped beetles try to collect nectar by licking the maximum amount. It is absorbed into the pharynx, where it mixes with enzymes. Actually, this is the first stage of processing, lasting before honey is formed.

Bees fill honeycombs with nectar

How honey is made: licked secretions, going down the esophagus, accumulate in special honey compartments - goiters. Honey craws block the passage to the stomach. The structure of such compartments provides space for a small honey reserve for personal consumption, the rest is regurgitated into the cells of the honeycomb. This is how honey is made. Thus, the bees manage to prepare and transfer a lot of nectar to the hive. Before the insect collects the required amount and completely fills the crop, it needs to fly around more than 100 plants.

Why do bees produce honey?

High-quality honey products are needed by striped beetles to maintain many physiological processes, such as:

• Milk formation;
• Enzyme production;
• Wax production;
• Development, growth, breathing.

Worth remembering! Honey and related products are rich in useful substances and nutrients. They contain more than 300 elements, the need for which cannot be described in words.

Nectars and directly produced honey are considered excellent bee food, consisting of the necessary carbohydrates. Before receiving honey, adults consume nectar for their own needs. It is also a useful food for larvae - brood. Here, each egg laid by the queen has a different purpose. If not fertilized, the larvae hatch into drones, the fertilized eggs become females, which, with proper feeding, become honey-bearing worker insects in the future. There is also one larva left, which is fed better than the rest - and later the queen bee hatches from it.

In addition to honey, foraging bees also consume pollen. At the same time, they need honey products all the time, but they can do without pollen. The lack or complete absence of such food can cause the death of striped insects. During the swarming period, workers can take with them a supply of food needed for several days.

Important! Striped insects make honey for their own nutritional needs and store it for future periods. In a year, one bee state can consume up to 100 kg of honey. Therefore, it is impossible to take away the entire accumulated harvest from them.

The second purpose of the finished product is nutrition for the younger generation. At the larval stage, young animals begin to consume honey, pollen and liquid as food from the 4th day of life. These products are necessary to nourish the uterus after leaving the queen cell. In fact, the product that insects themselves produce is the only reliable source of their vital energy. When it is consumed, heat is generated, which warms the entire bee state throughout its life (maintaining the air temperature at 33-35 degrees).

How bees collect nectar

In bee states, each unit is important because it has its own purpose. For example, the collection of nectar and pollen is carried out by collector insects, whose task is to collect and deliver as much plant secretions as possible to the hive. Next, the products are transferred to the receiving individuals, who suck the nectarines from the mouths of the field bees. In the process of such transfer, the sweet substance is further enriched by secretions of the glands of the bee body. This is how a supersaturated solution is produced.

Forager bees

It should be taken into account that with a large distance from the apiary to the honey plants, insects bring less nectar to the hive. This is due to the need to maintain the physical strength of working individuals. This means that beekeepers need to properly organize their apiary sites. A useful flight radius is considered to be a distance of up to 3 kilometers.

Before collecting nectar, insects chew it for at least 30 minutes. In this process, complex sugars are broken down, turning them into simple elements. This way the plant product becomes more digestible and helps protect against bacteria when stored in reserve. After processing, it is laid out in cells.

How honey is made from nectar

The collected and decomposed sweet solution remains in the honeycombs after processing. This whole process is called product ripening. The need for honey to mature is determined by the large amount of liquid contained in nectars. By the way, nectar can contain from 40 to 80% water in its composition. This level may vary depending on the climatic zone, weather conditions and characteristics of honey plants.

Honey collection

When transferred, the nectar is re-processed with enzymes, already in the body of non-flying bees. This process further dries the existing liquid. Additionally, during the harvest period, the hive is ventilated by the entire bee colony. The accumulated liquid slowly evaporates, forming a thickening syrup. To speed up the thickening process, working individuals blow it with flapping wings, like a fan. The syrup, which has the desired consistency, is actually the finished honey product. Now the full combs are hermetically sealed with wax plugs, which are made from flakes secreted by wax glands.

Making honey products is the main activity of striped insects. The productivity level of bee colonies may vary. It all depends on the distance between the location of the apiary and the honey sources. Good weather allows you to make at least 13 combined flights in a day, while the individuals manage to completely fill their goiter in no more than half an hour. It has been proven that with the right location, one family of insects can bring 20 kilograms of honey products to the hive per day.

How do bees make honey? And what kind of product is it - is it plant or animal? It seems that insects make it from plant nectar, but we take it from animals that process the nectar themselves. From this it follows that honey is a product of animal origin. In order to answer these questions, you need to understand the technology of honey production.

Nectar delivery stage

How is honey, or rather nectar, collected as a raw material for the production of the main product? The subtleties of the process consist in dividing all bees by function and profession.

In a hive there are usually only 2 categories of these insects - the queen and the workers. The queen lays eggs all the time, and the workers provide care and food for the children and their mother.

Worker bees are immature females who, by the will of genetic information, will never mature. This is their function and destiny.

Each worker bee, in turn, has some special working specialization. Some of them ensure the safety of the hive, others nurse the offspring, and others care for the queen. Among those who provide the hive with food, there are also professionals:

1. Scouts. These advanced units search for clusters of honey plants by smell. Having collected some nectar and pollen, they return to the hive. Here, with the help of the famous bee dances, the scouts tell the main detachment where to fly in order to collect a lot of raw materials for future supplies for the winter. In addition to honey, these include pollen, beebread, propolis, and wax.
2. The main group of collectors on explored lands collects everything that can be carried away in several flights from the hive and back.
3. Receivers are waiting for the collectors in the hive. Their function is to properly place nectar in the honeycombs for further processing.

Honey production

How do bees make honey from nectar? To produce a sweet product in the hive, there is a whole factory for processing raw materials. Bees obtain a sweet, aromatic product by processing nectar as follows:

1. First, excess water evaporates from the nectar. If this is not done, the solution with a low concentration of preservatives, that is, sugars, will ferment or become moldy. Initially, the water content of the raw material is 50%. This is just a semi-finished honey product. In order for the water to go away and the sugar to remain, the receptionists pack the nectar into honeycombs, filling them only partially. Around such honeycombs, insects provide good ventilation, which speeds up the process of water removal.
2. Next, the actual production process begins. How do bees make honey after removing water from nectar? To do this, you need to introduce the enzyme invertase into the semi-finished product. It breaks down sugars into fructose and glucose. It is from this moment that nectar becomes almost like honey. The process itself seems to be simple. Bees use their proboscis to suck the dehydrated substrate into a special honey sac. A large number of blood vessels pass through here, providing the flow of oxygen and other necessary substances. The endocrine glands that produce the necessary enzyme are also located here. Mixing with the enzyme in the goiter, this semi-finished product comes into contact with oxygen, which creates the necessary conditions for the hydrolysis process.
3. The substrate passed through the bee is returned to the honeycomb, where the hydrolysis of sucrose continues. As a result of this process, the very desired bee product is obtained. The finished version contains about 75% fructose and glucose. The percentage of sugar is reduced to 4.
4. After the bee has determined the desired degree of readiness of the honey, the cells of the honeycomb are hermetically sealed with wax. What do bees do when they seal finished honey? They provide complete isolation not only from all sweet treat lovers, but also from the air, which is of great importance for protecting organic substances from oxidation processes.

Why honey and not nectar

Processing nectar into honey is the creation of sweet preserves. Sugar, as everyone knows, is a good preservative. This is the basis for the production of jam, as well as the preparation of berries and fruits pureed with sugar. With a sufficient concentration of sugars in such canned food, bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that feed on the contents of our reserves, turning them into vinegar, alcohol or rotting products, will not be able to live. If sugars are diluted with something, such as plant sap or just water, then microorganisms can eat them, leaving behind an inedible substance.

A peculiarity of the nutrition of bacteria and unicellular fungi is their simultaneous presence within their food resource. Nectar extracted from a flower for some bacteria is home and food at the same time. For this reason, the task of social insects is to make the environment where bacteria and fungi live uninhabitable.

To this end, they do 2 things - they increase the concentration of sugars and convert them into fructose and glucose. Microorganisms inside honey die from dehydration and an overly acidic environment. The conversion of sugars to fructose makes the pH of honey sour, although the sweet taste is retained.

This is due to the presence of a large amount of acids that were originally in the nectar. The pH of various types of honey is at the limit of the possibility of life in this product. The insects themselves created such an environment by removing water from the nectar and also replacing sugar with fructose using enzymes. You can eat such food, but it is impossible to live in this environment.

The entire honey production process from the moment it is delivered to the hive lasts about 10 days. So the bees do a lot of work - after all, in order to get 1 kg of the finished product, they need to make about 100,000 flights. If we remember how honey is obtained in honeycombs, then the bee’s work takes on even greater proportions.

Man, despite all the science, has never learned to make a complete analogue of bee honey. Beekeeping as a branch of livestock farming continues to provide people with this very useful product.

Why do bees need honey?

Bee families are not much different from ordinary human families. Both make provisions that help them live and raise children. The only difference is that social insects didn't invent stores. But they don’t need anything except a sweet product stored for the winter.

Unlike other insects, bees do not fall into complete suspended animation, but simply reduce their vital activity. So in winter they need to eat something all the time.

As long as the weather permits and some flowers are still blooming, bees fly all the time for nectar, pollen, and resin. Some of these resources are eaten, others are used to equip the hive.

As soon as the weather becomes completely unflyable, the hive closes for a break that lasts until spring. From this moment on, the honeycombs are freed from wax, and honey becomes available to those who are hungry. This product is high in calories and very rich in vitamins. So, if the bees worked well in the summer, they will have enough food for the winter.

The problem is also that not only adults, but also eggs and larvae overwinter in the hives. To keep them safe, bees need to constantly maintain a certain temperature. In order for the eggs and larvae to have the right temperature around them, adults pretend to be something like an air conditioner. By vibrating their wings, they quickly heat up themselves and spread the heated air around them. Air conditioning is known to require a lot of energy. For this reason, replenishment of expended energy occurs through the next portion of food, which consists almost entirely of quickly digestible carbohydrates.

A logical question arises: if a person takes honey, then from what do bees draw their strength? A good beekeeper is able to calculate how much honey a hive needs for wintering. If, from a certain moment, part of the honey is taken from the hive, then the insects will work with redoubled energy, trying to replenish lost reserves. So the person encourages the bees to work for themselves and “that guy.” If there are a lot of honey plants in the area where the apiary is located, and the striped workers are in good condition, then the beekeeper will be able to take two-thirds of the stored honey, leaving the bees a sufficient amount of product for wintering.

So the one who makes honey actually works as if he needs to feed bees, the number of which is several times greater than the real one. One can only be amazed at the performance of small insects that live so harmoniously and in an organized manner.

So what is honey - is it a product of animal or plant origin? The uniqueness of the biochemical process organized by insects is that the composition of the original product does not change radically. It does not contain proteins or fats of animal origin. The amount of water simply decreases and the amount of fructose increases. So honey is still nectar that has undergone enzymatic processing and drying. And this was done by small insects who formed their own civilization in the hive.