How do bees produce honey?
- Bees would not survive outside of the hive in the cold winter months. So, during the favorable seasons like spring and summer, worker bees collect nectar and pollen so they can make stores of honey for the winter.
- Worker bees make only about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in their short lifetimes.
- The production of honey from nectar is a multi-step process that involves:-
- Worker honeybees using her proboscis to suck up nectar from the inside of flowers.
- Back at the hive, worker bees pass the nectar to the waiting house bees.
- As the nectar is chewed and passed from bee to bee, digestive enzymes change the chemical properties of nectar, converting it into honey.
- Now, they will spread the honey over the honeycomb to dry it and later store it.
- When we find such a beehive, we collect the food stored by the bees i.e honey.