sweet sweet nectar

 

happy bee on an apple blossom

 

This is where the honey process begins. Bees go from flower to flower drinking nectar until their ‘honey stomachs’ are full. These special stomachs have enzymes to break down the nectar sugars into a simpler sugar.

With a full belly, they go back to the hive and pass along the sugars to other worker bees. These bees ingest the sugars to break them down even more and eventually put they honey into the honeycomb.

The honey is still pretty wet at this point and cannot be sealed up for storage or they run the risk of fermentation later on. The extra water in the honey must evaporate. Now is when I totally dork out and tell you how this is done: the bees fan their wings to create a draft in the hive.  When the bees think it’s right, they seal up the comb.

Pretty amazing process…