How Honey Is Made

Interesting Facts About Honey

How do bees make honey?

When a honey bee takes nectar from a flower, she stores it in a "honey sack." When this honey sack is full, she returns to the hive, deposits the drop of nectar into the honeycomb, and evaporates the water out of the nectar by fanning her wings. Once the honey has aged, wax is used to seal it in the comb, which keeps it clean and safe.

A honeybee makes 154 trips for one teaspoon of honey.
A colony produces 60 to 100 pounds of honey a year.
To gather a pound of honey, a bee flies a distance equal to more than three times around the world. It takes two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

What kinds of bees are there?

There are three classes of bees: queens, workers, and drones. In a hive, there can be hundreds of drones, thousands of workers, but always just one queen.

The Queen

She is the only bee able to lay eggs.
She never leaves the hive and is constantly attended by workers.
She only uses her sting against other queens.
She lays up to 2,000 eggs per day.

The Worker

Workers are all sterile females.
If born during the active spring or summer months, they live for only four to five weeks; during winter, they live for a few months.
They perform many tasks in and out of the hive, including:

Gathering pollen
Making honey
Feeding the other bees
Producing beeswax
Building honeycombs
Protecting the hive

The Drone

Drones are males.
Drones don't work, can't feed themselves, and have no stinger.
They live for only about three months.
Their only task is to mate with queens.

Do all honeys taste the same?

There are as many flavors of honey as there are varieties of flowering plants. Location and climate conditions also contribute to producing very different products.

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