Last week we introduced National Honey Month and gave a brief history dating honeys use back to Ancient Egypt. This we week wanted to talk about how honey is made out of the nectar of flowering plants - but if someone were to ask you exactly how, could you tell them? Well keep reading to find that out!
Nectar is a sugary liquid extracted from flowers using a bee's long, tube-shaped tongue (otherwise known as a proboscis) and stored in its extra stomach, or "crop." While sloshing around in the crop as the bee continues gathering, the nectar mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical composition and pH.
When a honeybee returns to the hive, it passes the nectar to another bee by regurgitating the liquid into the other bee's mouth. This regurgitation process is repeated until the partially digested nectar is finally deposited into a honeycomb.
Once in the comb, nectar is still a viscous liquid — nothing like the thick honey you use at the breakfast table. To get all that extra water out of their honey, bees set to work fanning the honeycomb with their wings in an effort to speed up the process of evaporation.
When most of the water has evaporated from the honeycomb, the bee seals the comb with a secretion of liquid from its abdomen, which eventually hardens into beeswax. Away from air and water, honey can be stored indefinitely, providing bees with the perfect food source (their primary source of carbohydrates) for cold winter months.
Once in the comb, nectar is still a viscous liquid — nothing like the thick honey you use at the breakfast table. To get all that extra water out of their honey, bees set to work fanning the honeycomb with their wings in an effort to speed up the process of evaporation.
When most of the water has evaporated from the honeycomb, the bee seals the comb with a secretion of liquid from its abdomen, which eventually hardens into beeswax. Away from air and water, honey can be stored indefinitely, providing bees with the perfect food source (their primary source of carbohydrates) for cold winter months.
Until sugar became widely available in the sixteenth century, honey was the world's primary sweetener, with ancient Greece and Sicily among the best-known historical centers of honey production.
Honeys color, taste, aroma and texture vary greatly depending on the type of flower a bee frequents. Clover honey, for example, differs greatly from the honey harvested from bees that frequent a lavender field.
Honeys color, taste, aroma and texture vary greatly depending on the type of flower a bee frequents. Clover honey, for example, differs greatly from the honey harvested from bees that frequent a lavender field.
We love our beehive products but we also couldn't be more proud to offer an entire line of superior quality vitamins and minerals, all made in a FDA registered facility.
SHOP NOW
