How do bees gather honey? How do bees gather honey into honey?
Everyone is familiar with honey, it is already a must-have for many families. But many honey friends are more curious about how bees collect honey. Today, I will tell you about the process of bees collecting honey.
Bees will search for the source of nectar before collecting nectar. Generally, a small number of scout bees will be sent to find the source of nectar. When the scout bee finds the source of nectar, they will collect a small amount of nectar or pollen and bring it back to the hive, so that their companions can check the quality of the nectar.
Then through the unique dance of the bees, tell the companions the location of the nectar source and the distance. Different dance movements represent different information. A circular dance that climbs a small circle but in an indeterminate direction indicates that the nectar source is relatively close to the hive. Walking in a semicircle in both directions and swinging the abdomen frequently at the junction of the semicircles is a figure-eight dance, which means that the nectar source is far away from the hive.
When the bee colony receives the information from the scout bees, it will go out of the hive to collect in large numbers. Here we must know that only the worker bees in the colony have the function of collecting, and the drone and queen bee will not collect honey. The worker bee collects the nectar from the flower through its long snout, stores it in a nectar sac, and when it is done, flies back to the hive. In this process, you will find an interesting thing, that is, when the distance is long, the bees will find a short way to the nectar source, and when they come back after collecting, they will find some smoother roads to fly.
After returning to the hive, the collected nectar will be handed over to the back-office bees. The back-office bees mix the various enzymes secreted by themselves with the nectar through continuous processing, and then evaporate the excess water in the nectar by shaking their wings and dancing their bodies. . It usually takes about a week to two weeks to brew these thin nectars into mature capping honey.
