CATDOLL : CATDOLL: What is the process of bees collecting honey?

1. What is the process of bees collecting honey?

The process of bees collecting nectar is to extend their proboscis into the flowers again and again. After the bee extends its proboscis into the flower, it will suck the nectar into its honey sac and then take it back to the beehive.

After the bees bring the nectar back to the beehive, it will go through a series of processing. After the excess water in the nectar is removed, the honey can be considered mature. For mature honey, the worker bees will cover the honey cell with beeswax, and the honey in this honey cell is considered ready.

Detailed process

There is a chewing mouthpart in the bee's mouth, which is an important tool for them to collect nectar. In addition, there is a long and thin tube between the bee's mandible and tongue, which makes it convenient for the bee to inhale nectar when collecting nectar.

After finding the nectar source, the bee will let its feet firmly attach to the pistil, and the small tube in the mouthparts will extend into the middle of the pistil to suck the nectar. Generally, the bee will first extend the small tube into the stamens of the flower. When collecting nectar, they will collect nectar from one flower and then move to another. After sucking enough nectar, they will return to the nest, spit out the nectar, and then return to collect it.

After the bees return to the nest at night, they will reprocess the honey they collected during the day to make honey for people to eat. It takes bees about seven days to make truly mature natural honey. Honey that has only been brewed for two or three days is of low quality and is not mature. This is what people call raw honey.

2. How do worker bees collect nectar and make it into honey?

After the scout bees find the nectar source, they fly back to the hive and inform the collecting bees of this information through bee dance. The collecting bees fly directly to the flowers at the nectar source, extend their beaks to the nectar glands, absorb the nectar from each flower, and temporarily store the nectar in the honey sac. When the nectar sac is full of nectar, the collecting bees fly back to the hive and give the nectar to the house bees, or directly spit it into the empty nest cells. During this process, the collecting bees have mixed the invertase secreted by the salivary glands into the nectar, causing the nectar to begin to be continuously converted from sucrose to fructose and glucose. After the honey-making worker bees continue to add invertase and evaporate water, after several hours of conversion and concentration, the nectar becomes honey, which is stored in the empty nest cells of the side combs or the empty nest cells in the corners of the brood combs and sealed with wax.

Worker bees are the only workers in the bee colony. They are responsible for nurturing, cleaning, guarding, collecting, and making honey. When collecting nectar, worker bees use a long proboscis that is soft, multi-sectioned, covered with fine hairs and has a lip at the front to suck the nectar into the honey sac in their body. Note that the honey sac is not a stomach, but a temporary warehouse for storing honey, like a retractable balloon. When it is full, it can be slapped to expand 5-6 times.

After the worker honey sacs are full, they return to the hive and spit out honey to the house bees, who then process and brew it. When the worker bees collect the honey, they mix saliva containing invertase into the honey. After the house bees receive the honey, they continue to mix it with saliva and brew it repeatedly. At the same time, they increase the fanning to evaporate the water, which promotes the concentration of the honey, reducing the water content from more than 40% to about 18%, and becoming a high-concentration honey.

Because the glands secrete invertase, it can inhibit the growth of various microorganisms, promote the conversion of sucrose into glucose, fructose, and many polysaccharides, and become a very complex mixture of sugars, which is a green health product that is very beneficial to humans. It usually takes 5-7 days for a bee colony to brew mature honey. If the climate is humid and the moisture content is high, the bees will not brew after these days. Therefore, 42-degree high-quality honey cannot be brewed in humid areas.

During the honey-collecting season, worker bees fly 10 to 20 times a day, visiting at least 100 flowers or even thousands of flowers each time. The amount of nectar collected each time accounts for about half of their body weight, about 40mm, and up to 70-80mm. But after brewing and consuming, only one-tenth of the honey remains. So to brew 1,000g of honey, they have to fly more than 300,000 kilometers, and many worker bees have to work hard. Therefore, the price paid by worker bees for each drop of honey is amazing, and we should cherish it.

Although there are tens of thousands of flowers, there are thousands of species that can provide pollen, and only about 40 species can produce pure honey. Therefore, not all flowers can produce nectar, and not all nectar can produce pure honey.

3. Why do bees collect nectar?

Because bees can only eat liquid food. Second, it has evolved over tens of thousands of years. Third, in nature, honey is a high-energy food. For insects of the size of bees, eating honey is much more efficient than eating other things and can meet the needs of the entire group. And bees don't just eat honey. Pollen. Royal jelly. Beeswax. In fact, bees eat everything. It's just that the sealing level of these things is different.

4. Does bees’ nectar collection have any impact on flowers?

Generally speaking, bees collecting nectar has little impact on flowers. However, bees also collect pollen while collecting nectar. For female flowers, pollination may be completed during this period. Female flowers will wither soon after pollination, and then turn to fruit growth. Therefore, I believe that bees collecting nectar has a greater impact on female flowers.