Bees make honey from flowers. We all know that. About 60000 bees live in a bee colony. So, these bees usually provide the nectar of about 50 million flowers per day to the colony. Bees work in groups to find the best flowers for nectar. Also, bees use different sounds to communicate during their work.
The bees living in the bee colony have to do different things depending on their age. Among them, the bees who collect nectar are special. Those bees fly on average about 5 km to collect nectar. During that trip, one bee checks between 50-100 flowers for nectar.
Nectar is the main ingredient in honey. Also, nectar is the main source of energy for bees. When a bee finds a suitable flower to obtain nectar, the bee uses an organ which like a long tube known as the proboscis to suck the nectar from the nectary of the flower. The nectary is the nectar-producing structure in the flower. The nectar thus absorbed enters the bee’s stomach. In the stomach, the complex sugars in nectar are broken down into simple sugars that do not coagulate easily. This process is called inversion.
A bee that has obtained nectar in this way returns to the bee colony and gives the nectar stored in its stomach to a young bee about 12-17 days old. These tiny bees store the nectar in the hexagonal chambers of the bee colony. Then, with its wings, it blows hot winds to the chambers and dries the nectar. The dried flower nectar is called honey.
The bees then use a waxy secretion to create lids for the chambers where the honey is stored. During winter, when flowers are not blooming, bees open lids and eat honey. The taste and aroma of honey vary depending on the types of flowers blooming in different regions, climate, and various other factors.
Many people prefer honey because of its sweet taste. Honey is also used as medicine. That’s not all the benefits of bees to humans and the environment. Bee is the animal that contributes the most to pollination. It happens because they fly from flower to flower to collect nectar. For this reason, scientists say that bees are an essential factor in the existence of life on Earth.
