How do bees make honey from nectar?

The bees are all busy collecting nectar at this time of year, in the spring.

But what do they do with it? How do they turn it into honey?

The short story is, they change the sugars chemically, and remove water. Let's look at that in more depth:

Collecting nectar

Plants produce nectar in nectaries. Nectar is mostly sucrose and water.

The shiny middle is the nectary, and nectar. This is a manuka flower.

When a forager bee visits, she will suck up the nectar with her long mouth part. She stores the nectar in her sac in front of her stomach.

A bee can carry up to about 40mg, which is the size of a large raindrop. Quite a lot, compared to the size of a bee!

Inside her stomach, enzymes are added. These start the process of converting the sucrose to simple sugars of glucose and fructose.

Back to the hive

The forager returns back to the hive with her load. There she passes the nectar to the mouths of waiting hive bees. 

These bees also add the same enzymes, to continue the chemical changes. 

The processing bees spend about 20 minutes holding droplets out on their 'tongues', so some water can evaporate. 

Evaporation continues

Once the moisture content is down to about 30 - 50% the hive bees put the nectar into cells, just lightly packed and spread on the cell walls.

The bees turn the hive into a huge dehumidifier, and start fanning their wings to circulate warm air throughout the hive to evaporate more moisture from the ripening honey. This works best at night when the outside humidity is lower.

They also move the honey around from cell to cell, gradually increasing the quantity in each cell.

The honey comb cells are capped

When the honey is fully ripe, it is repacked into a new cell, full up, and a wax cap put on the top. This is like putting the lid on a jar of honey - it prevents the honey from reabsorbing moisture.

It's important that the moisture content is kept low, as otherwise the honey will start to ferment, and the sugar change into alcohol, which is toxic to the bees.

Honey qualities

So these marvellous bees have:

• changed the sugar to glucose and fructose - which is an easily digestible form of energy
• added other enzymes that create antibacterial properties (this is all honey, not just manuka - manuka has another, extra chemical process)
• evaporated water so the honey won't ferment
• made it more acidic, which helps it keep

And then they store it, so the whole colony can survive winter. All pretty special for the animal kingdom.

If you would like to read a bit more of the science-y bits, see the full post at Business of Bees