Here’s How Bees Make Honey: From Flower to Hive

Obama Administration Announces New Measures To Protect Bee Populations — HOMESTEAD, FL - MAY 19: Honeybees are seen at the J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company on May 19, 2015 in Homestead, Florida. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration announced May 19, that the government would provide money for more bee habitat as well as research into ways to protect bees from disease and pesticides to reduce the honeybee colony losses that have reached alarming rates. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

If you are fond of beekeeping or just bees for that matter, then you should know that they make honey from flowers, into hives.

Unlike other bees, honeybees particularly are social insects and the most common of the nine honey-producing bee species. The domestic honeybee (Apis mellifera) is known scientifically as the European or western honeybee, native to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

Living in colonies, honeybees get all of their resources from flowers. As a result, their life cycle follows that of flowering plants in the environment. During spring, they hoard honey for weeks in advance to prepare for the coldest months when there no more flowers. That sweet substance they've made during the spring, summer and fall helps them survive throughout winter, while they cluster together to keep themselves warm.

But how exactly do bees make honey? LiveScience explains how honey is made "from flower, to stomach, to mouth, to mouth again and then into the hive."

How Bees Make Honey

While all bees benefit from the "honey haul", the task of honey-making is mainly the female bee's job, according to biologists at Arizona State University. Female bees are the worker bees and are all offspring of the queen. As they age, their tasks as workers also change over time at a certain job depending on the colony's need.

Also known as forager bees, they fill their stomachs with nectar from flowers and convert it into honey at their hives. Meanwhile, male bees, which make up about ten per cent of the hive population, only has one job - to spread the genes of their colony. They spend their lives eating this honey, before leaving the hive to mate.

Depending on several factors such as climate, ventilation, and number and kinds of bees there are in a hive, honeybees make honey until every cell in their hive is full.

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Honey Production

Honey is generally very long-lasting and powerful antimicrobial agent with a wide range of effects, according to Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. Various components including sugar content contribute to the antibacterial efficacy of honey, preventing the bacteria from growing and cause spoilage.

As the nectar from a flower enters a bee's stomach, an enzyme called glucose oxidase breaks it down and helps produce the honey. Honeybees are physically designed to collect and transfer honey. It takes around 1,000 flowers to get its honey stomach completely full, then it returns to the hive to begin the honey-making process.

To reduce moisture content, the bees then pass the nectar from mouth-to-mouth and chew it for about half an hour. When the nectar's moisture content is reduced from 70 percent to about 20 percent, then it becomes honey.

Beekeepers using artificial hives have been widely debated whether it impacts honey production, the environment and the bees themselves. The Journal of Agricultural and Food Information confirms that bees produce more than they need and using the excess for human benefit causes little harm to the bees' welfare.

When flower resources eventually become limited, it causes other bee species to die out.