How make honey do bees?

How make honey do bees?

Bees are among nature's most remarkable creatures. These social insects live in colonies of between 40,000 and 50,000 bees. The social structure of a bee colony is precisely defined and each bee acts exclusively in the interests of the colony. Bees are essential to pollinate plants; By pollinating food crops, bees play an important role in the production of up to 30 percent of the US food supply.

Make honey do bees

bees produce honey that is consumed by humans and other animals around the world. Bees are bred commercially for a number of reasons, but most importantly  because of the honey, they produce. Honey is not an essential food for humans, but as a sweetener, it is healthier than sugar and as a food additive it adds flavor to everything from soup to pumpkin. with barbecue sauce. We even use honey for medicinal purposes.

How do bees produce this food? The bees themselves eat honey, so they need constant care, especially in winter when the flora is dormant. Bees produce honey from the nectar that worker bees collect from various plants on their daily tours. In general, it is the older worker bees who do this foraging. They fly from flower to flower and use their proboscis as a kind of straw to drink the liquid nectar and to keep it in a sack on their body, the “stomach of honey”.

Nectar contains about 80 percent water and most of the rest is sucrose (a disaccharide or complex sugar). In a process called inversion, worker bees break down these complex sugars into glucose and fructose: monosaccharides or simple sugars. This process takes place while the nectar is still in the honey's stomach and while the bee is still flying from flower to flower and drinking more nectar. The process is carried out by an enzyme, invertase, which converts most of the sucrose into glucose and fructose. A second enzyme, glucose oxidase, breaks down glucose into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide. Gluconic acid maintains a low pH level, which makes honey an inhospitable environment for bacteria, molds, and fungi. Hydrogen peroxide offers short-term protection against germs. These properties make the converted nectar and possibly honey a safe feed for bee larvae and also improve the medicinal uses of honey for humans.

As soon as the honey stomach is full, the worker bee returns to the hive and spits out the nectar that has already been converted by enzymes. However, the substance is still about 80 percent water, most of which must now evaporate. The nectar is injected into the honeycomb cells and the worker bees living in the hive flap their wings angrily to evaporate the water content. The nectar gradually thickens and turns into honey, which contains only 14-18% water. Once the thickening is complete, the cells of the honeycomb are covered with beeswax and then eaten by the bees or fed to the bee larvae or collected by a beekeeper.

Individual bees can only produce small amounts of honey in their lifetime - a fraction of a teaspoon. However, a beehive with 50,000 bees can produce up to 200 pounds of honey per year.

Since the bees themselves use honey as their main source of nutrition for themselves and they're young, don't beekeepers “steal” the bees' feed when they harvest this product? In reality, bees can produce much more honey than they need. When a beekeeper removes a honeycomb filled with honey and empties it and then puts it back in the hive, the bees see that it is empty and come out immediately, collecting more nectar and producing more honey. Beekeepers often install pre-made wax combs to keep the bees from making their own combs. As a result, bees have much more time to produce honey. Beekeepers should take care not to over-harvest and ensure their bees have enough honey to survive the winter months when nectar harvesting is not possible. However, if the hive is properly managed, a bee colony will provide enough honey for its own needs as well as for the beekeeper's benefit.

Even in nature, bees have a tendency to overproduce honey. That's what they are programmed for. Such a chronic overproduction can appear somewhat inefficient or unnecessary in contrast to the laws of nature, which would otherwise be strictly effective. It may be just as important to wonder why some people with already overcrowded bank accounts continue to work long hours