How Do Bees Make Honey?

Bees are amazing little creatures, and they're super busy.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "busy as a bee"? That's because bees work hard to make honey, and the whole process starts with flowers.

When a bee lands on a flower, it uses its long tongue, kind of like it's a straw, to suck up sweet liquid called nectar.

The bee stores that nectar in a special part of its body called a honey stomach.

I wish I had a honey stomach.

It's not like a regular stomach.

It's more like a backpack just for nectar.

Once the bee's honey stomach is full, it flies back to the hive.

Do you know what a bee's hive is? Right, it's the bee's home, exactly.

There, it passes the nectar to another bee by, get this, throwing it up into the other bee's mouth.

Don't worry, it's not gross for bees.

It's just how they work together.

That second bee chews the nectar for a while, breaking it down with special enzymes in its spit.

After the nectar gets passed from bee to bee a few times, it gets stored in little wax rooms in the hive called honeycombs.

Then, the bees fan the nectar with their wings to help dry it out.

When it's thick and sticky enough, they seal it with wax, and boom, that's honey.

Bees don't just make honey because it's tasty.

They make it because it's their food.

In the winter when flowers aren't blooming, so they don't have access to that nectar, bees eat the honey that they made earlier.

So the next time you see a bee buzzing by, remember, it might be on a honey-making mission.

I didn't realize how much work went into making honey until I looked it up to talk about it today.

I am amazed by bees.

There are so many steps in the process, and all the bees work together to make enough honey to keep them fed in the winter.

And bees are just so tiny.

There are just so many things in our world that all have their own little processes and things that they do and steps that they follow.