The world of beekeeping is really fascinating; curiosities of bees There are many and each more interesting, although this time we will focus on that sweet and dense food that bees make: honey. Have you ever wondered how bees make honey and what they use it for? Is it true that honey is bee vomit? Does honey expire? What are the different types of honeys?
In Green Ecologist we give you answers to these and other questions with this entertaining article about how bees make honey. We will tell you about the process of the formation of honey from when the bees go to the flowers until the beekeeper extracts it from the combs. Stay to find out!
We start counting, step by step, how bees make honey and how they store it in their combs.
Now that you know how honey is made, you want to know why do bees make honey? Of course, bees don't make honey for humans, although luckily for us, they make more than they need for themselves.
Bees use honey for food, since flowering only occurs mainly during spring. In this way, they make sure they have food reserves throughout the year (similar to what happens to ants, only they gather food during the summer).
In addition, they also use honey to mix it, together with salivary enzymes, with the pollen that they also collect from flowers; mix that they also store in the honeycomb for a while. They do this because pollen is the food of the larvae or baby bees, but it is not digestible for them if it is not provided in the form of the aforementioned mixture.
If you like this type of curiosity, we recommend you read this other post with +20 curiosities of invertebrate animals.
We mentioned earlier that bees swallowed and regurgitated nectar for a time to transform it into honey, so we can consider that honey is bee vomit? No, it definitely isn't.
Why honey is not bee vomit? Well, first of all, because the stomach where the nectar is stored is not a stomach as such, but is prepared to make honey and that is why it is called melario crop. Second, the transformation from nectar to honey also consists of other steps external to the animal, such as flapping to remove all possible moisture to avoid fermentation.
Thus, vomiting is not the same as regurgitation, which is what bees do and, furthermore, it does not come from their stomach, but rather from their honey crop.
Another very curious fact about the world of bees is that there are many species, it is estimated that they 20,000 species of bees. The most curious thing is that, of all of them, they are only 5 species of bees that have the ability to produce honey.
Of those 5, the most abundant is Apis mellifera, which in turn has several subspecies. For example, the honey bee typical of the Iberian Peninsula is Apis mellifera iberica. Apis mellifera It is found almost all over the world, except the poles (since there is no flowering there) and some parts of Asia.
Honey can have a monofloral or multifloral origin. We say it is monofloral honey when it comes in more than 45% of a single type of flower; instead, it will be multifloral honey or "thousand flower honey"when the origin of the nectar is more heterogeneous or diverse, that is, it has come from several species of flowers.
Between the best known monofloral honeys we have honey from:
Each monofloral honey has a particular flavor, smell and color. Thus, we have, for example, that orange blossom honey has a pale yellow color with an intense flavor that is reminiscent of the orange blossom. Other honeys, such as heather, are very dark and have a bitter taste.
As bees make more honey than they need for them, a certain amount can be extracted ensuring that they always leave enough food, as we remember that it is always vital to take care of them. In fact, here you can see a project of Beehives in the city to save bees and in this other link you can learn more about The importance of bees.
Let's see, next, how to remove honey from the honeycomb step by step:
If you are wondering about the honey expiration here we answer your question: honey retains all its beneficial properties for many years, so we can say that honey does not expire.
The honeys that we find in supermarkets have an expiration date on their labels, although it is something that is indicated only because it is mandatory. In fact, honey up to 3,000 years old has been found in some pharaonic tombs (as they used it for embalming) and it was in perfect condition.
Here below you can see the video that we have prepared on this interesting topic and, also, if you liked discovering all this about honey and bees, we encourage you to learn more about them with this other article by Green Ecologist about the Difference between bees. , wasp and bumblebee.
If you want to read more articles similar to How Bees Make Honey, we recommend that you enter our category of Animal Curiosities.