What’s up to all of our friends in the community! Welcome to “Bee-autiful Creature: Get to Know the Honey Bee” with the Honey House Team. As we dive in please keep in mind that the intricacies of Beekeeping and Honey are vast, and all of the insights we give, we do so to help educate the world regardless of your experience levels in beekeeping!
For centuries, honeybees provided humans with sweet honey and beeswax. The array of honey health benefits makes for the interest that humans have in these hard working creatures. Although a lot of its species are in the wild, the beekeeping industry has spawned these highly social and cooperative winged insects for its commercial uses.
Before diving into the numerous honey health benefits, here is a fascinating lowdown on these brilliant insects!
Get to Know The Honeybee
While they are commonly known as honeybees, their scientific name is Apis mellifera. These invertebrates are herbivores and have an average life span in the wild of up to 5 years. A colony of bees live in hives and is typically divided into three types:
- Workers
These female bees are the ones that people get to see the most as they gather pollen and nectars for food. Other than foraging from flowers to make natural honey, worker bees are also in charge of building, protecting, and cleaning the hive. Even maintaining good air circulation inside the hive is dependent on the worker bees’ tireless wing beating.
- Drones
Unlike the worker bees, drones do not have a role in making honey and cannot even sting. These male bees only have the sole function of mating with the queen. Even so, they are essential for the survival of bee colonies for future generations. They sacrifice themselves in the process as they die once they have served their purpose in reproduction. During winter months, colonies go into survival mode and expel drones out of the hive to avoid depleting resources. Since they are unable to feed or protect themselves without the worker bees, drones eventually die off shortly after being evicted.
- The Queen
A queen bee is distinctly larger than the rest and has a smooth stinger that allows it to survive through multiple stings. As one who rules the hive, the queen’s role does not stop at laying eggs. She also releases pheromones or chemicals that regulate the behavior of the colony. With her scent, worker bees can focus on their roles within and outside of the hive. The unity and cohesion that is initiated by the queen ensures a thriving hive throughout her lifespan, which is an average of 2-3 years.
The Hive and Honeycomb
On average, each worker bee can produce 1/12th teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Considering that bees have a very short lifespan of only six to eight weeks, it is kind of amazing how they can produce ounces of honey before they die. The biggest factor that contributes to successful honey production is a healthy hive.
While most people use the terms interchangeably, a beehive is a whole structure that encloses the honeycomb. You can think of the hive as a house and the honeycomb cells as the rooms. Each cell also has its purpose. Some are used as incubation chambers to raise new generations of bees, while most of the cells are used for honey and pollen storage.
To make a comb, honeybees eat some honey to produce a wax-like substance on their bellies. They collect the wax, chew it up, and construct perfect sheets of honeycomb cells. Beeswax is insoluble in water due to its lipid consistency making it the perfect rain-resistant storage.
The hexagons that are formed by the bees’ tiny little feet are more than just for the aesthetics. Ever heard of the “Honeycomb Conjecture”? This mathematical explanation asserts the brilliance of honeybees in creating hexagon-shaped cells instead of circles that can leave gaps or squares and triangles that will need more materials to build. By shaping the cells into hexagons, the bees can have as much room inside the hive while minimizing the energy required to produce and move around the cells.
Why and How Do Bees Make Honey?
Other animals hibernate during winter. Bees, on the other hand, do not and instead stay active even throughout the coldest of months. What keeps them moving is all the honey they hoarded for weeks. Honey not only provides the needed energy for their flight muscles but also keeps the hive warm for the colony. Since thousands of bees work together, the colony can make more honey than it needs. The excess produced in bee hives usually ends up bottled by beekeepers allowing us to enjoy plenty of honey health benefits.
The process of making honey starts as the flowers entice the bees with their sweet liquid called nectar. Worker bees use their proboscis, a straw-like tube in their mouth, to suck the nectar up and store them in their stomach. Once the nectar is in the stomach, enzymes called invertase break down the sugars in the nectar to make it less likely to crystallize.
As the workers get back to the hive, they pass the nectar to the younger bees and store them in the honeycomb cells. They also fan the collected nectar to get rid of its water content through evaporation. Once the water is reduced to more or less 18 percent, only a highly concentrated sugar remains. The nectar is now turned into honey and the only thing left to do is to cover it with fresh beeswax and stock it for future use.
The Importance of Honeybees to Humans
A lot of people only regard honeybees as the main producers of high-quality honey. What is uncommon is the fact that honeybees contribute a major economic impact to the human race. They play a crucial role in the pollination of agricultural crops. As they pick up and spread pollen, most food crops can reproduce, securing a good supply of food.
The beekeeping industry also provides much-needed jobs to plenty of people. Aside from honey, it is thanks to these bees that humans enjoy the benefits of honey by-products for food and medicine. The wax that they produce is essential in a lot of industries, like pharmaceuticals and cosmetic companies.
Is Honey Good for You?
Health and honey is one of the most well-researched subjects throughout history. The most impressive among all honey health benefits are its high antioxidant content and both anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. Many studies show how honey is great for treating wounds and burns, fighting infections, and improving cold and flu symptoms.
Honey is not only delicious but is a natural healing wonder.
The Honey House team is stoked to share this blog with you all! Thanks for reading along. If you have any questions about honey, or bee keeping please reach out to us on our social media platforms! Feel free to share any honey/bee keeping stories you have had with us! We love to hear it.
