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Many of us eat honey with our breakfast in the morning, or in many desserts that we enjoy. The process that bees follow to make the honey that we love is very specific and quite interesting.
There are three different types of bees that live in a bee hive. The queen is the head of the hive. She lays as many as 1500 eggs each day and is the only female that lays eggs. The drone's main purpose is to mate with the queen. Then there is the worker bee.
All worker bees are female, and they do just what their name implies, they work. Honey bees often visit 1000 flowers each day and they collect the food necessary to sustain the colony. From fragrant decorative flowers, to fruit blossoms, to the flowers produced by squash, the honey bee is as important to the pollination of food crops as she is to the production of honey.
The worker bees go back and forth between the hive and the flowers. Each time they enter the hive, they do so with the approval of the guard. Once inside the hive, she does a very specific and technical dance that tells the other bees where to find the flowers. This lessens the work that is necessary for each bee.
While at the flower, she uses her long straw-like tongue to suck the nectar out of the flower and into her nectar stomach. Pollen sticks to her body as she is collecting the nectar, and she uses her front and middle legs to comb the honey into pollen baskets that are found on her back legs.
Bees have openings in their abdomens through which they secrete wax. They shape the wax into thousands of small containers called cells, these cells make up the honey comb. Each cell is perfectly formed and is used to house both pupae and honey.
They change the nectar into honey by adding chemicals that are in glands in their heads. The chemicals change the nectar sugars into honey sugars. They then spread droplets out and fan them with their wings. This dries up most of the water, leaving the honey thick, sticky, and extra sweet.
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