Ever wondered how is honey made? Honey is made by bees using nectar from flowers. Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by flower and plants to attract pollinating animals such as honeybees. But the entire process of making honey is not that simple. Let's share this interesting info with you in detail.
Step 1 on how is honey made: Retrieval of nectar. Honeybees go from flower to flower to collect nectar. They use their long, tube-like tongues to suck nectar out of flowers and plants, which they then collect in their 'honey stomachs'. Honeybees have two stomachs, one is their regular stomach and the other is their honey stomach which they use like a nectar backpack. The honey stomach holds almost 70 mg of nectar and when full, it weighs almost as much as the bee does. Honeybees visit between 100 and 1500 flowers on average in order to fill up their honey stomachs.
Step 2 on how is honey made: Process of making honey
Once the honeybees return to their hives, they pass the nectar to the other worker bees who suck the nectar from the honeybee's stomach using their mouths. They then 'chew' the nectar for a while, and this is when the bees' digestive enzymes break down the complex sugars into simple sugars. This ensures that the honey stored within the hive, is easily digestible for the bees, and less likely to be attacked by bacteria.
The bees then spread the nectar throughout the honeycombs where water evaporates from it, making it a thicker syrup. The bees make the nectar dry even faster by fanning it with their wings. Once the honey is gooey enough, the bees seal off the cell of the honeycomb with a plug of wax. The honey is stored until it is eaten. In one year, a colony of bees eats between 120 and 200 pounds of honey.
Step 3: Extracting the honey
For us to be able to consume the honey, it has to be extracted from the honeycombs where the honey is stored. Beekeepers remove the frame from the apiary which contains both honey and honeycombs that is surrounded by bees. They will then set the frame down in an area away from the apiary so that the bees will eventually leave the honey and the frame. Any remaining bees were wiped away using gloves. Traditionally, a knife is used to cut the honeycomb away from the frame and use a small spoon or butter knife to scrape the honey from the comb. But beekeepers nowadays will use a honey extraction equipment and run the extracting process for several minutes with the extractor motor. The honey will then be filtered to let the wax and other particles settle out and finally, the honey will be bottled.