Surely you have often wondered how bees make honey? This mysterious process interested people of antiquity, as we do now. We suggest you find out exactly how pollen is collected, why is it for bees and what is the end result?

The most important thing - pollen, is not just a means for honey to cook with bees. The important thing is that without pollen there would be no bees. It is a raw material for baby bees and adult insects. Useful floral elixir insects are used for several purposes at once. The first is nutrition for nursing women who produce royal jelly. By eating pollen, nurse insects maintain their strength by productively producing healthy milk.

The second goal of consumption is support for newborn baby bees. The lipid-protein mass, which, in essence, is the content of the flower, nourishes the babies, helps them grow quickly. True, such feeding takes only three days for working bees, for the uterus - until the final maturation. When this period for working insects ends, we can see a grown, stronger individual with formed working glands.

For builders in the evidence, floral content is no less valuable. This product, which is collected by worker bees, stimulates the activity of their wax glands, which means it allows you to build strong honeycombs. What for? Naturally, to seal them and.

In addition, drones also need a pollen product. It contributes to their puberty and immediate function - the insemination of females. And the last, no less important function of pollen: it is actually a “test” for the pollen. This substance is extremely useful for striped workers in the cold season.

As you can see, pollen has a lot of functions. Everything for which it is needed is vital for the inhabitants. You can learn more about the properties of pollen and the work of bees from the video.

The subtleties of the collection process

How exactly do black-striped laborers collect pollen? It is known that the only tool for transferring raw materials from the flower to the hive is the body of the insect itself. Insects find the pollen-bearing plant and immediately collect both nectar and pollen. In the video below, you can see how painstaking and delicate work it is for such a small organism.

1. A bee sits on the pollen area of \u200b\u200ba flower.
2. Starting to collect nectar, it picks up pollen grains.
3. The hind legs help the insect to clean the raw material from the body so that it accumulates in special “brushes” on the middle legs.
4. Further, the "brushes" are compressed, the bee drags them between the hind legs, as if pushing the collected pollen grains onto the hind legs.
5. After that, the bee carefully “combes out” the left and right hind legs with a special comb-tooth located on the shin of the insect. After that, a pollen lump is formed.
6. If the raw materials are collected from the earrings of plants, then the pollen is dry. Her bees collect extremely carefully.
7. If the cup of the flower is closed, scraping of the raw material occurs with the help of the jaws and the first pair of legs.
8. After that, the bee makes translational movements with its paws, moving the pollen lump into the lower leg. It is also called a “basket”. There it is held by special lateral hairs (several) and one lateral curved.

So, after the lump is in the basket, the black-and-yellow worker will have to repeat this process of collecting and rolling many more times to fill the basket to the end. Upon arrival in the evidence, the worker bee passes the pollen to the receiver. With her middle foot, she pushes the lump out of the basket, and the receiver rams it into a special cell where it is stored. It is very entertaining and useful, but nevertheless - how is honey obtained? This action will be discussed later.

How does honey appear?

An interesting and mysterious process can be said - the birth of honey. How do bees make honey? As with the collection of pollen raw materials, the production of the sweet final bee product is carried out in several stages. The bee host processes nectar (pollen) by evaporating excess moisture to form a honey mass. Surprisingly, insects are able to adjust the ventilation of the evidence so that the liquid evaporates from the honeycombs, which already contain microportions of nectar.

When one serving of nectar becomes thick enough, it is transported by bees to other, free cells. The more honey has matured, the higher it will be in the tray, and so on along a decreasing path. A special enzyme, invertase, promotes the decomposition of natural sucrose into two components: glucose and fructose. The bee collects a drop of nectar into the goiter, then releases it to its proboscis. After - retracts again. And so several times.

Thus, nectar is mixed with bee secret and oxygen. This process starts the hydrolysis process in honey, which does not stop even after being placed in cells. That is how beekeepers get honey, which consists of 75% of sugars that are easily digested, namely the fructose and glucose components.

Video “How Bees Make Honey”

This fascinating video will tell you how striped toilers can make bee nectar.

How do bees make honey? Surely, lovers of this delicacy have repeatedly wondered how these toilers manage to create such a unique and useful product from the nectar of plants. We will tell you about the process of making honey by bees. By the way, did you know that this is the only product suitable for human food created by insects?

Honey is made from nectar, which bees get from honey plants. Its sources are various shrubs, flowers and plants. Spring thaw and flowering are ideal times for the painstaking work of bees to process the first honey plants.

Stages of honey production by bees

The process of how bees make honey from nectar is divided into several complex stages. Having become acquainted with them, one wonders how skillful and complex these insects are!

· The beginning of the process is the search for honey plants. Moreover, each bee has its own function! So, in the hive there are scout bees, collector bees and young receiving bees. The first task is to find the sources of nectar and report the find to the pickers. Information is transmitted through the dance-whirling winged insects. As a result, scouts and pickers fly to the found honey plants.

· Arriving at the site, pickers collect nectar using a proboscis. At the same time, it is mixed with the secretion of the oral cavity of an insect rich in enzymes. This process is one of the key steps in how bees make honey.

· The next stage in the preparation of honey is the decomposition of nectar into cells of honeycombs. A bee-receiving droplet fills the cells of the honeycombs, and the evaporation of moisture from nectar is achieved by natural ventilation of the hive as a result of whirling insects. As the honey ripens, the receivers transfer nectar to different cells.

· The amazing thing about how honey is made is the transformation of sucrose into fructose and glucose. The chemical reaction is carried out through a special enzyme, "invertase", produced in the proboscis of an insect. Nectar, combined with bee secret and oxygen, triggers the hydrolysis process. At its end, a product is born, in the chemical composition of which there are up to 75% of easily digestible sugars (glucose and fructose).

· The product matures when moisture in it remains no more than 21%. The process of how the bees make honey is almost complete! Craftswomen seal the honeycombs with a refreshing healing delicacy with wax cells. The elixir, which has no analogues in its chemical composition, as well as useful and nutritious properties, is ready! The resulting product differs in moderately thick and uniform consistency, golden hue, astringent aroma and rich sweet taste, with the presence of light bitterness!

This is how complicated, amazing and painstaking is the process of how bees make honey. Think about how logical and skillful it is to cook the product beloved by everyone from nectar.

Have you ever wanted to know how bees process nectar to produce honey? First you need to create honeycombs - containers, where sweet nectar will be stored, and where brood will be grown. In them, the bees live. Each cell of the honeycomb has 6 faces, two adjacent honeycombs have one common wall. Next, we will tell you more about how bees make honey.

Types of Cells:

• uterine;
• drone;
• bees;
• transient.

Construction takes place from top to bottom. The construction starts in early spring, when the bees just fly out to the first flowers. Feeding on nectar and pollen, the wax glands are activated. Every beekeeper knows that the most valuable honeycombs are spring ones. They are real kingdoms! Just imagine, about 5 workers are working on creating one cell! This is just amazing! Watching bees make honey is a real pleasure.

What are bee honeycombs made of?

They build their houses from wax. With the help of the wax glands, the bee secrets it from its belly. The thicker and more fattened she is, the more wax she will have. In the nest, the cells are parallel to each other and horizontally to the ground. Each nest contains about 8 pieces. Their design is incredibly unique! Striped architects make maximum use of the space, make the cell highly durable and ergonomic. That is, the honeycombs are made up of beeswax glands.

Honey production technology

No wonder they say "works like a bee"! After all, these are the most stubborn and hardworking workers. In order to make 1 kilogram of honey, one bee must collect nectar from approximately 1,000,000 flowers! That is why striped work must be respected, because the way the bees make honey can be called art.

How do bees make honey?

1. A bee sits on a flower, and with the help of a special trunk absorbs nectar in a special honey ventricle.
2. Then she flies home.
3. Near the entrance there are guards. What for? They make sure that an extraneous bee or some other insect does not get into the hive.
4. The prey there is already waiting for her friends, who take nectar from her.
5. The process of processing nectar begins in the stomach of the collecting bee, and continues with the one that received it. By repeatedly exchanging a drop of nectar, it is ultimately left in the cell. But the finished product is still far away. Produce it for a very long time.
6. Nectar thickens in the bee ventricle, and is also filled with acids, disinfectants and enzymes.
7. A drop of nectar wanders from the bee’s ventricles into cells until as much moisture as possible evaporates from it.
8. As a result, when the whole cell is filled with honey, it is covered with a special wax lid that allows you to extend the shelf life for a long time.

The source of nectar is honey plants, that is, trees (linden), shrubs (heather) and flowers (clover). When the bee does not find a suitable flower, it can collect the sweet liquids that the beetles secrete, or the secretion of plants.

And why are bees making honey?

Why do bees produce honey, try every day, flying from flower to flower? Everything is elementary simple! They make honey because they eat it! Small earners independently provide themselves with food, making reserves for the cold season. By the way, bumblebees, wasps and hornets also collect nectar, but few people know about it.

Bee honey contains the most nutrients and sugar. These tiny hard workers have no second to rest, because the summer is short, and 10,000 compatriots must be provided with food! They not only collect pollen from plants, but also pollinate them, helping to multiply. Now you understand how bees make honey. As you can see, small bees are much more useful than some big people!

Video

Honey is necessary for bees to carry out physiological processes: the production of milk, enzymes, wax, for growth and development, for respiration. Honey contains more than 300 nutrients. How bees make honey, this valuable energy product, from where the nutritional properties appear in it, and why bees make honey, are told by numerous videos and printed materials.

What do bees make of honey?

• Starting in May, plants secrete nectar from nectaries. Mass departures of bee colonies in search of honey nectar begin at 16 ° C. Bees have a strong instinct, forcing them to collect nectar and accumulate honey. The bee family can work hard for a whole year, as long as the plants bloom.
• In addition to nectar, bees bring to the hive a pad, secreted by the leaves of trees and shrubs. But honeydew honey is not good. The bioprocess, as the bees make it, is not interesting for this article, because, eating such honey in the winter, the bees get sick and die.

The process of forming a product such as honey in the bee organism is quite complicated. How do bees do it?

• Once on a flower, the bee licks the secreted nectar, which is then absorbed into the throat. When the pharyngeal glands reach flight age, the enzymes invertase and amylase, which break down sucrose, are intensely secreted. So begins the process of processing nectar into honey.
• How bees make honey: nectar enters the esophagus and into its special extension - the honey goiter, which accumulates nectar collected by the bee. There, nectar is transferred to the hive. A goiter blocks the entrance to the middle intestine - the stomach. It is so arranged that part of the nectar remains for its own nutrition, part then burps into cells of cells.

Then the picker flies into the nest, passes the nectar processed by the pharyngeal glands to the receiver.

• The receiving bee transfers nectar in its goiter and begins to fill the honeycomb, the nectar is laid out in small portions in them, while the process of monosaccharide formation is still ongoing in the goiter's goiter. In honeycombs, excess moisture is removed from nectar by ventilation with wings.
• As moisture is removed, honey thickens more and more. Thickened honey is transferred higher, the cells are filled to the end, and then sealed with wax caps.

To completely fill the goiter, to get honey, a hardworking insect visits 100 honey plants.

Why do bees make honey?

There are several answers to this question:

• Nectar and honey produced from it are a carbohydrate feed for bees.

Honey is used as food by adult bees and brood larvae. Working bees eat pollen in addition to honey, and they need honey all the time, and they do without pollen for some time. Due to the lack of honey food, the insect can die. At a time when the bees begin to swarm, they take with them the necessary supply of honey for several days.

• Another answer to the question why bees make honey is the need to feed the young. Starting from day 4, the larvae feed on a mixture of honey, pollen and water. After leaving the mother liquor, the uterus also eats honey or food from a mixture of sugar and honey.
• Why else do bees make honey? This product is an energy source for bee colonies, it generates the necessary amount of heat to maintain the required temperature in the nest (34-35 ° C).

Conclusion

Why do bees make honey - this healthy and nutritious product?

Harvesting honey is the most important activity of bees. The amount of nectar collected by the bee family is the greater, the closer the flowering plants are located to it, the larger the size of the nectar drop. During good weather, the hardworking insect makes 13 working flights, filling the goiter in 20-30 minutes. During this time, the picker visits hundreds of flowering plants.

Most bees fly around melliferous plants within a radius of 1 km. It was experimentally calculated that one family manages to collect up to 20 kg of honey per day in areas of intensive beekeeping.

Amber, transparent, sweet honey is the best treat for the sweet tooth. We treat it, use it in cosmetology, add it to baking and just eat it with tea. Honey is actually a unique product that was created by bees many millennia ago. It has a unique taste and aroma, and it also contains many useful substances. But not everyone knows how he gets to our table. Let's talk about this in more detail.

This is actually a very time-consuming, lengthy, but unique process. Honey bee is the most important insect of all that exist on earth. Only thanks to this hard worker we have a unique opportunity to taste this divine healing product.

It is believed that the bees were created by God specifically for humans, because they collect much more honey than they need to feed themselves, and give the extra part to humans.

Initially, bees get honey for themselves to feed themselves. They create their home and honeycomb so that no one couldn't get there. Honeycombs are built so that no molecule or microbe can get there. Clogged honey can be stored forever!

A bee family is a conditional name that a person came up with. In fact, this is some kind of higher organization, in which there is a uterus that lays eggs, which the bees fed from the larva, they feed the dronesthat are needed to procreate. The life of a bee is quite short, it is only a month and depends on the wings. In the summer, bees work a lot and the wings quickly become unusable.

A working honey bee begins its labor activity from birth

Labor activity of a bee from birth to death

How are honeycombs made

Bee honeycombs are hexagonal cells that are used to store honey. The bee brings nectar to the hive, and then chews it, adding enzymes to it, and seals it in a honeycomb. Also grown in honeycombs  progeny. Honeycomb cells have different sizes, depending on the purpose, bee, drone, uterine, honey. Honeycombs are built by bees themselves from wax, which they themselves produce. A bee makes the wax so consistent that in a softened state it is malleable and can be given the desired shape, but in a hardened state it is non-fragile and does not break.

Beeswax is durable, it is not affected by the environment and various microorganisms. Bees build honeycombs in absolute darkness, as their sense of smell is well developed. It takes about three days to build three frames from scratch, but if the beekeeper sets the framework with wax, it takes much less time.

How to make wax

Wax is produced in the bee by special glands when royal jelly ceases to be secreted. On the abdomen of an insect a wax plate is formed, which subsequently melts under the influence of physiological secretion. It has a light yellow color, which later darkens. Beeswax is very widely used in industry and in medicine. It tastes pretty good.

How is honey

First of all, the bee must find the source of nectar, that is, flowers.

Where is nectar taken:

1. Fruit trees.
2. Vegetable crops.
3. Clover.
4. Dandelions.
5. Berry bushes.

With its thin tongue, rolled into a tube, the bee sucks nectar from each flower. Nectar gathers, folds into special, located under the belly of a bee, honey pouches called the second bee stomach. In order to fill the second stomach, a bee flies around 1,500 flowers. In order to bring honey, the bee can fly up to 8 kilometers from the hive, and then freely find the way home.

The first stage of honey production occurs in the cavity of the insect. It is as if chewing it, adding to it needed for storage  and thickening enzymes. The bee just eats the pollen that it needs for the work of the pharyngeal glands. Pollen contains a large amount of vitamins and amino acids; it also feeds the uterus for a good offspring.

On the hind legs of the bee there are indentations with special bristles to carry pollen grains in flight was more convenient. There are also scrapers and special brushes on the third pair of paws, with their help it removes pollen powder that remains on the abdomen.

Sugar, which contains nectar, has a lot of water. Thanks to ventilation and heat in the hive, the water evaporates and a sweet syrup is obtained. To obtain honey, insects transfer nectar from one cell to another, while they waving wingsthus actively ventilating the nest. The evaporation of moisture from nectar is accelerated when it is transferred from cell to cell, with each bee additionally enriching it with various enzymes.

Strict sanitation is observed in the hive, foreign objects cannot get there, the bees are very clean, since if in honey  excess moisture gets in, it can quickly ferment. The resulting bee mixture is transferred to the very top of the nest and tightly packed in a comb for longer storage. In total, the production of honey from and to takes between one and two weeks in bees.

Why do bees make honey

In fact, these smart insects not only collect nectar, they also love pollen of flowers, which is a source of protein for bees. The pollen is collected in lumps, placed in a honeycomb, and poured with honey on top and sealed. This is called bee bread. To produce high-quality honey, favorable weather conditions are needed, if a dry summer happened and there is not enough moisture to collect nectar, the bees collect the sweet secretions of other insects, from which honey is also made. But such honey is not suitable for wintering; it contains many salts that adversely affect bee health.

There is another source of raw materials for the preparation of honey - sugary substances found in plants and honeydew. Flowering trees provide bees with raw materials for making honeydew. Such honey is delicious  for humans, but not useful. A person takes a lot of honey from bees, so for the winter he must feed them with thick sugar syrup so that the bees do not die of starvation.

Some people think they are allergic to honey. This opinion is partially erroneous, since allergies can only cause low quality honey  due to the content of various impurities. High-quality honey can be eaten even by the most difficult allergies.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize. Why do bees need honey? They make it for life support, in other words, to eat and feed offspring. It is believed that bees are one of the first insects of our planet and over millions of years they have learned to provide themselves with tasty and healthy food.