How is honey actually made

At this stage, the nectar and enzyme mixture contains too much water to be stored over the winter. The bees must work on drying it out. Some water is removed from the honey while it is passed from bee to bee. But, bees use two other methods for drying out the honey. For one, they will spread the honey over the honeycomb. This process increases the surface area and allows for more water evaporation.

Bees will also fan their wings near the honey to increase airflow and evaporate even more liquid. The bees really do work for their food! The final step in the honey-making process is storage. The honey is deposited into the cells of the honeycomb, where it will stay until the bees are ready to eat it.

To keep the honey fresh, each cell is capped with beeswax. Making beeswax is another fascinating process. Learn more about beeswax and how bees make it: What is Beeswax? Many of us take honey for granted. We can simply go to the store and pick up some delicious local honey to enjoy. We rarely think about all of the time that went into the production of honey.

Next time you add a few drops of honey to your breakfast toast or tea, give a little thanks to the hundreds of busy honey bees that made it all possible! For example, honey made from orange blossom nectar might be light in color, whereas honey from avocado or wildflowers might have a dark amber color. On average, a hive will produce about 55 pounds of surplus honey each year.

Beekeepers harvest it by collecting the honeycomb frames and scraping off the wax cap that bees make to seal off honey in each cell. Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in an extractor, a centrifuge that spins the frames, forcing honey out of the comb.

Some beekeepers and bottlers might heat the honey to make this process easier, but that doesn't alter the liquid's natural composition. A thick, golden liquid produced by industrious bees, honey is made using the nectar of flowering plants and is saved inside the beehive for eating during times of scarcity. But how do bees make honey? Nectar — a sugary liquid — is extracted from flowers using a bee's long, tube-shaped tongue and stored in its extra stomach, or "crop.

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.