What are they doing in there?
Have you ever picked a honeysuckle flower, pinched off the end and drawn out the sweet liquid inside?
That liquid is called nectar, and is made of 80% water and 20%complex sugar. Nectar is the beginning of honey.
Nectar is sipped up using the bees long straw-like tongue. It is stored in what is called the bee’s ‘honey stomach’ but it’s more like a pouch in the bee’s esophagus. When the pouch is full the bee goes back to the hive and passes the nectar on to other bees who pass it on to more worker bees. It is like the game hot potato.
What actually makes it to the cells is eventually “fanned” by the bees to evaporate it until it reaches a specific concentration and viscosity turning into the syrup we call honey. This honey is then capped with wax by the bees for later use.
