Making Honey

Is it fine for humans to take honey and eat it too?

Although there are about 20,000 different species of bees in the world, only the honeybee makes the kind of honey we are used to eating. These bees produce honey to feed themselves, which makes them different from creatures that eat things like fruits, nuts and other insects. Honeybees make honey as a way of storing and saving food for colder months when they are not able to leave their hive as often and there are not as many flowers to gather food from.

A single honeybee will only produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life! That is not even enough to sweeten a cup of tea!

However, humans can take honey and eat it because a colony of honeybees can produce two to three times more honey each year than they need to survive the winter.

Have you ever wondered how bees make honey?

Learning about the different body parts of a honeybee.

Learning why each different honeybee body part is important for the process of honey making.

Learning about how honeybees make honey

Bee Honey Making Process: Step-by-Step

When the weather gets warmer and flowers start to bloom, honeybees will leave their hives in search of flowers. The actual process for making honey goes like this:

Once they find a flower, they will use their long tongue like a straw to suck nectar, a sugary juice, out of the plant.
The nectar is stored in a second stomach, also known as the “honey stomach.”
After they have filled up their second stomach, the bees will return to their hive and start to pass the nectar through their mouths to other bees.
These bees will chew on the nectar for about 30 minutes.
Then they pass it along to another bee!
As the nectar is passed from bee to bee, it is turned into honey.
Once the nectar becomes honey, the honeybees will store it in honeycomb cells, which act as little jars made of wax.
The bees then flap their wings over the honey to make it thicker and more like syrup instead of sweet juice.
Once the honey is ready, the bees will seal the cell using a wax lid to store it for later.
At this point, skilled beekeepers can take some of the finished honey from the hive, taking care to not harm or damage the colony.

How bees make honey activity

The benefits of honey

Honey is a gift from nature. Honeybees make honey. Honey is good for our health. It is important to remember to give honey to children only after they are one year old. These are some children's work showing the benefits of honey.

Eating honey based food

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