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Honey is a useful product of beekeeping, which is necessary for the life of not only humans, but also bees. Shaggy workers begin to actively collect nectar in the spring, when the first flowers appear, and continue until late autumn. During this period, bees make honey, which is necessary for a safe wintering.
Why do bees need honey?
Honey is a nutritious product that is essential for the full development of the bee colony. It is the main carbohydrate feed for both adults and brood. Collecting bees can feed on honey product and pollen, but they need honey all the time, and pollen is a supplement. With an insufficient amount of sweet treats or when using artificial bait, bee colonies quickly die or leave their home, taking food with them for several days.
The product is also used for feeding brood larvae. Young insects on the 4th day of life begin to consume a nutrient mixture consisting of honey, water and pollen. Bee after birth, a sweet mixture is also needed for full development and procreation.
Bees make honey and combs, as these products are an inexhaustible source for the bee colony, an integral part of brood rearing.
Bees produce a natural product from spring to late autumn to provide their families with food for the whole winter. After the onset of the first frost, insects uncork the wax and eat a sweet treat containing a large number of calories, which make it possible to endure the winter cold.
How bees get honey
A bee colony consists of a queen bee that lays eggs, scouts, guards, collectors, receptionists and drones.
Hard workers collect a sweet treat from honey plants - it can be flowers, shrubs, trees that bloom from early spring to late autumn. Before starting honey collection, scout bees fly out of the hive to determine the place of collection. Once discovered, they return to the bee house and transmit information to the working bees. Insects transmit nectar drop by drop to the bees to determine the quality and make movements along the honeycomb, showing the direction for flight.
After the signaling dance, the scouts go to the place where the nectar was found, dragging the collecting bees with them.
Where do bees collect honey?
After the insects have found honey plants, they land on the flower and begin to recognize whether there is nectar on the flower or not, using the taste buds located on the paws.
When pollen is detected, they begin to collect it using a special goiter, sending it to the stomach. In one flight, the bee transfers to the hive up to 45 g of the sweet substance, but the greater the distance from the honey plants to the hive, the less pollen the worker bee will bring. This is due to the fact that during the flight, the insect eats an insignificant part of the nectar to replenish energy.
In a day, furry workers can fly up to 8 km, but long-distance flights are dangerous for them. The most productive distance is considered to be 2 km. When collecting pollen at such a distance, a hard worker is able to collect nectar from 12 hectares of a flowering field.
How bees make honey
In order to get 1 kg of a sweet treat, a bee needs to fly around 10 million flowers. After returning home, the furry toiler gets rid of the nectar, transferring it to the receiving bee for processing.
She, in turn, processes the nectar in the stomach, after the completion of the process, it begins to extend and lower the proboscis, releasing and hiding a drop of honey. The bee does this procedure 130 times. Next, the bee finds a free cell and carefully lays a drop of the treat. The preparatory stage of honey preparation is over, it remains only for the bees to get rid of excess moisture and enrich the product with enzymes.
What is the name of the expansion of the bee's esophagus, where honey is formed
The nectar collected by the bees is located in the honey crop. The nectar collected by the shaggy workers enters the goiter through the esophagus and remains there until the insect returns to the hive. A valve is located between the honey goiter and the digestive system, which prevents the honey product from entering the digestive tract. After returning home, the insect regurgitates a portion of nectar from the honey goiter.
The amount of sweet treat that one bee can bring depends on the honey flower. If, after visiting 100 flowers, there is a lot of pollen, she returns home with a filled honey crop, with a load of 35 mg. The weight of a working bee is 10 g, so the weight of the load can reach half the body weight of an insect.
How honey is obtained from bees
Bees obtain honey from the pollen of honey plants. Collecting honey is a painstaking job that involves over a thousand bees. The process of preparing a sweet treat takes place in several stages:
- After collecting pollen, the worker bee chews the nectar for a long time and thoroughly, adding enzymes to it that break down sugar into glucose and fructose. During processing, the insect adds saliva, which has an antibacterial effect, due to which the honey product is disinfected, does not sour and is stored for a long time.
- After the worker bee brings the nectar to the hive, she transfers it to the receiving bee.
- The prepared honeycomb is filled with the finished product by 2/3 of its volume.
- In order to lower the humidity in the hive, increase the air temperature and turn the product into a viscous syrup, the bees begin to flap their wings intensively.
- When a new batch arrives, the receiving bees attach small drops of nectar to the upper walls of the cells.
- After the work done, the honeycomb is sealed with wax, creating an airtightness. In the created vacuum, honey will reach full readiness.
Ripening process
Ripening honey is a painstaking and lengthy process that turns nectar into a healthy product. The collected pollen contains about 92% moisture, and high-quality honey should contain no more than 20% water.
When the honey product matures, cane sugar is converted into fructose and glucose, which provide high nutritional value. In addition to the breakdown of sugar, when the delicacy ripens, polysaccharides are synthesized, due to the action of enzymes produced by the insect's body.
In the process of maturation of a sweet delicacy, other biochemical processes also occur, saturating the product with good taste, aroma and useful substances. The ripening time of the honey product depends on the strength of the family and climatic conditions. In cloudy weather, due to high humidity, the process is delayed.
What factors affect the beneficial properties and quality of honey
Bees make honey from nectar, so the quality of the product is influenced by the humidity of the air, the type of plant, the climate and the season. The taste and content of useful properties of honey depends on the moisture content, the less liquid, the tastier and healthier the honey product will turn out.
The quality and quantity of the honey product directly depends on the location of the apiary and which honey plants are located around it. The total sugar content in nectar varies from 2 to 80%.Shaggy workers prefer to collect pollen from plants containing at least 15% sugar. In addition to sugar, the flower, depending on the variety, contains nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, vitamins and organic acids, which give the prepared honey its characteristic features.
Conclusion
Bees make honey not only in order to please a person with a tasty and healthy product, but also to support the vital activity of the bee colony. The whole family is involved in the process of making honey, if a significant part of it is taken away, insects may die or leave the hive.
