How Honey Is Made
Chemistry my dear Watson, Chemistry that's how honey is made. Enzymes, disaccharides, monosaccharides- there's a brave new world on the molecular level of bees.
To understand why these small, furry angels should be reared in every garden in the world, we're going to break down the process of Nectar->Honey->You.
How Honey is Made: The Growing
The first step in the life cycle of honey is in the ground. It's in the dormant radicule that lays all winter asleep, waiting for the frost to let up- That's just a fancy way of saying, "Honey starts as a seed."
Bees collect nectar from flowering plants, and some of those plants start with a good garden. Even unwelcome weeds flower. Fireweed and knapweed have flowers that feed bees and become some of the most prized honey variants you can come across.
So the honey we eat starts as a seed, grows from a stalk to a flower that opens petals to attract the itinerant honey bee. And this is where we get into the insides of the honey bee.
How Honey is Made: The Gathering
The worker bee is industrious. In her life she travels up to 7 miles away from the colony looking for blooming flowers where the UV landing strips light up her flight path. She's a great pollinator, and orchards and agricultural operations all over America depend on her to help those flowers produce fruit.
We've got beekeeping components and tools online for sale here.
To be "fruitful," a plant must have its pollen moved from stamen to stigma true some plants are self-pollinating- but some aren't. Like squash. Google "pollinate squash by hand," and you'll see how much work it is to NOT have bees.
Depending on your bee's tongue (there are long-tongued and short-tongued bees), when she lands on the flower she will use it to harvest nectar and pollen from the flower- and inadvertently move pollen from the stamen to the stigma, helping the plant to produce fruit.
A bee's tongue has many uses including grooming and sensing pheromones, but in the production of honey the tongue harvests nectar where it is then deposited into its crop, also called the "honey stomach"- different than the stomach that digests its food in the winter.
Want to know how bees communicate?
Inside the honey stomach the nectar concoction mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical composition and pH, making it more suitable for storage. The enzymes that bees produce turn the sucrose, "nectar," (a disaccharide) into glucose and fructose (monosaccharides).
How Honey is Made: The Fair Exchange
When she returns to the colony, the newly minted monosaccharides in her honey stomach are regurgitated, much like a bird, into the mouth of another drone.
This other worker will chew the concoction for up to thirty minutes more- and the process is continued until the glucose/fructose ready for the next step in the honey-honing process.
The fan and cap.
How Honey is Made: The Fan & Cap
The fructose/glucose concoction that we call honey, after traveling from the flower blossom back to the hive and then making the rounds between bees, is STILL not in a form we would recognize.
At the stage in the honey game, the "honey" is more of a runny consistency when the bees first deposit it inside the honeycomb "cups." There is a final process needed to get it to that sticky sweet viscosity we all know and love- and that's what we call, "The Fan and Cap."
While the viscosity of the soon to be "honey" has been getting higher and higher as it makes its way from honey stomach to mandibles back to honey stomach, when it is deposited inside the honey comb, it is still too "runny" for the bees' liking. So begins the process of fanning.
Read about spinner extraction versus the crush and strain method for harvesting honey.
The uncapped honey is fanned by the bee's wings, further raising the viscosity by increasing the evaporation. When the honey reaches the right viscosity, it is capped, and the bees move on to the next one. The high viscosity of honey gives it a high osmotic pressure and protection against microbes. It's too thick for bugs to mess with!