Honey how is it made

Honey starts as flower nectar collected by bees, which gets broken down into simple sugars stored inside the honeycomb. The design of the honeycomb and constant fanning of the bees' wings causes evaporation, creating sweet liquid honey. Honey's color and flavor vary based on the nectar collected by the bees. For example, honey made from orange blossom nectar might be light in color, whereas honey from avocado or wildflowers might have a dark amber color.

On average, a hive will produce about 55 pounds of surplus honey each year. Nectar — a sugary liquid — is extracted from flowers using a bee's long, tube-shaped tongue and stored in its extra stomach, or "crop. When a honeybee returns to the hive, it passes the nectar to another bee by regurgitating the liquid into the other bee's mouth.

This regurgitation process is repeated until the partially digested nectar is finally deposited into a honeycomb. Related: Who invented bread? Once in the comb, nectar is still a viscous liquid — nothing like the thick honey you use at the breakfast table.

The bee is a marvelous flying machine. She can carry a payload of nectar or pollen close to her own weight. This changes the nectar into honey. Sometimes the nectar is stored at once in cells in the honeycomb before the mouth-to-mouth working because some evaporation is caused by the Finally, the honey is placed in storage cells and capped with beeswax in readiness for the arrival of newborn baby bees. A baby bee needs food rich in protein if the bee community is to flourish.

Before returning to the flower again for more pollen, the bee combs, cleans and cares for herself? Throughout her life cycle, the bee will work tirelessly collecting pollen, bringing it back to the hive, cleaning herself, then setting out for more pollen.