We have ever wondered how the honey that we enjoy at our breakfast table each day is prepared. It is a fascinating story.
Bees live in colonies. A honeybee colony consists of three categories of bees, the workers, the drones and the queen bee. The workers provide food and protection to the colony, the drones or fertile males who mate with the queen, and finally the queen, who lays eggs.
Honey is made by the worker bees in the beehive
An average honey beehive contains one queen, 100 drones and 60,000 workers. The workers are female bees while drones are male. The queen bee lays more than 2,000 eggs a day and about 250,000 eggs in a season. It lays more than 1,000,000 eggs in its lifetime. Bees have life span of one to two years. The worker bees have many duties. In the beginning, they clean and polish the hives. After some days, they look after the larvae of the bees. Eventually, they go out to collect the nectar form flowers. Do you know how these bees make money?
In fact honey is their food, and so, for the bees, making honey is like collecting food from flowers. The flowers contain sweet liquid called nectar. The bees drink this nectar and carry it to the beehive in their honey sacs. A bee must visit about 1000 flowers to fill its honey sac. The honey sac is located near the belly of the bee. A valve separates it from the belly. The sugar present in the nectar undergoes a chemical reaction. The water present in the nectar evaporates, and honey is formed, which can be stored in the hive for a very long time.
There are many ways of extracting honey form the hive. The comb can be squeezed to yield honey. A machine called honey extractor is also available for removing honey from the combs. The color and taste of various kinds of honey vary depending upon collected. Honey contains many substances, which include two kinds of sugar- laevulose, enzymes, many vitamins, small amounts of proteins and acids. That is why honey is good for our health and fitness.