How is Honey Made: The Gathering
The worker bee is industrious. In her life she travels up to 7 miles away from the colony looking
for blooming flowers where the UV landing strips light up her flight path. She’s a great pollinator,
and orchards and agricultural operations all over America depend on her to help those flowers
produce fruit.
To be “fruitful,” a plant must have its pollen moved from stamen to stigma—true some plants
are self-pollinating… but some aren’t. Like squash. Google “pollinate squash by hand,” and
you’ll see how much work it is to NOT have bees.
Depending on your bee’s tongue (there are long-tongued and short-tongued bees), when
she lands on the flower she will use it to harvest nectar and pollen from the flower… and
inadvertently move pollen from the stamen to the stigma, helping the plant to produce fruit.
A bee’s tongue has many uses including grooming and sensing pheromones, but in the
production of honey the tongue harvests nectar where it is then deposited into its crop, also
called the “honey stomach”… different than the stomach that digests its food in the winter.
Inside the honey stomach the nectar concoction mixes with enzymes that transform
its chemical composition and pH, making it more suitable for storage. The enzymes
that bees produce turn the sucrose, “nectar,” (a disaccharide) into glucose and fructose
(monosaccharides).
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