Without much ado, let’s dive in:

1. “Honey-carrying”

Honey bees are scientifically known as Apis mellifer, and this stands for ‘honey-carrying, bee.’ They are excellent pollinators of flowers, vegetables, and fruits, thus helping plants to grow and environmentally friendly as well. They do this by transferring fertilizing powder or pollen between the male and female parts of flowers and this transmission helps plants to grow their seeds and fruits at the end of the day.

2. Living in a colony

Honeybees live in colonies or hives and are divided into three types:

• Drones – These are male honeybees whose sole purpose is to mate with the queen. Hundreds live in each colony or hive during spring and summer seasons. But when winter arrives, the hive enters survival mode and the drones are driven out.
• Workers – They are females and their major purpose is to search for nectar and pollen from flowers. They are also responsible for building and protecting the beehive. Workers can also use their wings to circulate and clean the air. They are the ones that most people see outside the hive flying up and down.
• Queen – This is the bee that is in charge of the hive and her only job is to lay eggs. These eggs are the next generation of bees in the hive. The queen is also known to emit chemicals that direct the activities of the other honeybees.

3. Making the new queen

When the queen bee dies, workers create a new queen. They do this by picking out a young larva and feed it with what is referred to as ‘royal jelly’ which is special food. Royal jelly helps the larva to mature into a fertile or productive queen.

4. Magic food – superfood

Honey, that sweet substance produced by those amazing insects contains several nutrients which are vital for sustaining life. These are vitamins, enzymes, minerals, and water. What makes honey unique among other foods is that it is the only food that naturally contains an antioxidant that is known to improve brain function and is known as ‘pinocembrin.’

5. Speedy creatures

They fly at impressive speeds of about 25 kilometers per hour and their wings beat the air approximately 200 times per second, which is quite astounding.

6. The queen bee

The busiest time of the year for the queen is during summer and that is when she lays about 2,500 eggs every day. She can live for about five years.

7. A short life of working bees

The worker honeybee can only live for about five to six weeks during which she produces a small dollop of honey, about one-twelfth of a teaspoon.

8. Excellent sense of smell

The honey bee has a remarkable sense of smell, thanks to the 170 odorant receptors they possess. They use these odorant receptors for communication within the hive as well as to identify or distinguish different types of flowers when foraging for food. They also possess ten receptors for taste.

9. Dangerous “women”

Only female honeybees sting; the males don’t.

10. The royal jelly food

The only difference between queen bees and worker bees is that the latter receives additional rations of ‘royal jelly’ but they share the same genes.

The post Astonishing Facts about Bees appeared first on Food Converter.

The honey-making process begins with the bees visiting flowers, especially when spring arrives. Bees sit on flowers and collect nectar – that is the sweet juice that is produced by different blooming flowers. When the need to gather nectar arises, bees tend to remain as close as possible to the hive and are known not to exceed a radius of 4 miles.

Bees gather nectar by making use of their tongue and creating a sucking action. This way, all the nectar in the flower is extracted and mixed with an enzyme that is secreted by glands in the mouth of the bees. After this process, the mixture is stored in the stomach of the honeybee. In case you don’t know, bees have two stomachs; the honey stomach and the food stomach.

As soon as the honey stomach is filled to its brim with the nectar mixture, the bees fly back to the beehive where they transfer the nectar mixture to other bees – i.e. the worker bees – via their mouths.

The worker bees continue the process of making honey by chewing the nectar mixture collected from the foragers for about thirty minutes. At the end of thirty minutes, a worker bee that has already chewed the nectar mixture passes it to another worker bee. So the chewing goes ahead, and the exchange from one worker bee to another continues until the nectar turns into thick and uniform syrup known as honey.

As soon as this transformation is made, the bees turn their attention to storing the honey. Honeycomb cells – which in reality are not cells – are jars created using wax. This is where all the newly produced honey is stored.

The honey is still wet when stored in the honeycomb; the bees get to work drying their cache of honey using their wings. This process also enhances the quality of the honey by making it stickier. Once the honey becomes dry and ready, the honeybees seal off the honeycomb cells or jars using a lid created with wax. Bees do this to protect the honey from contaminants in the air.

This task is tedious, and one would expect that it would produce a considerable amount of honey. But the opposite is the case as about eight honeybees can only provide just one teaspoon of honey throughout their lifetimes.

Bees make honey so that food can be readily accessible by everyone in the colony. The location also has an impact on how much honey is produced; in the southern part of the United States, a hive can survive on about 40 pounds of honey. But in the northern part of the country, honey that weighs up to 90 pounds is needed for the colony to survive in winter.

The post How Bees Make Honey? And Why? appeared first on Food Converter.