Making Honey

Bees do not make honey for money. They make honey to feed themselves. To make honey, forager bees collect nectar, a sweet liquid found in flowers. The forager bee sticks out her long tongue and sucks up the nectar. She stores the nectar in a special stomach called the honey stomach.

Turning nectar into honey

When the forager bee's honey stomach is full, she flies back to the hive. She passes the nectar to a house bee, who swallows it. In the house bee's honey stomach, chemicals called enzymes are added to the nectar.

The nectar slowly turns into a drop of honey, which the house bee puts into a comb cell. She fans the honey with her wings to dry up any extra water. When the cell is full of honey, the bee closes it with a cap of wax. The bee in the picture is filling a comb cell with honey.

We get the leftovers

Bees make a lot more honey than they need. The beekeeper takes the extra honey to sell. He or she must be careful not to take too much, or the bees will starve.