The Biology of Honey

Over the weekend, I was able to help Stan Moulton with our last nuc transfer of the season. I found myself with a significantly deeper knowledge of bees this time around, but I also left with a lot of questions. One of the big ones was: "How is honey made?"

We're doing nuc transfers! More bees being given new homes today! #savethebees #justbeecause #utah

A photo posted by Bee Champions (@beechampions) on May 22, 2015 at 4:43pm PDT

In doing some research, I discovered that the process of making honey and its many uses is actually quite fascinating. My research helped me learn things that I would never have known and deeply broadened my understanding and respect of bees.

The Significance of Honey

As we have already learned in previous posts, honey is absolutely vital to our survival because of the service they do in pollinating our food supplies. But it is culturally significant as well. In fact, honey has been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs. This gives us another thing that is particularly beneficial to us: the unlimited shelf life of honey. The pharaohs recognized it and venerated it, being buried with jars of honey that are still edible today, thousands of years after they were laid to rest with the deceased kings. Another amazing aspect of honey that it is one of very few food sources that has all significant nutrients to live off. In other words, you can literally eat honey your entire life and you would not be any worse for wear for it. According to Matthew 3:4 in the King James Version of the Bible, John the Baptist lived in the deserts of the Holy Land living off honey.

How Honey is Made

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. Chemistry was one of my worst subjects in school, but even I was surprised by the simplicity of the process. Below is a fantastic video on how the chemistry of honey works.

The science is simple: flower nectars are basically made up of sugar water. When a bee extracts it and takes it back to the hive, chemicals secreted by the bees break the sucrose into fructose and glucose. Further chemicals are used to convert the glucose into the honey substance that we know. The process is also surprisingly fast: a large hive can produce up to 7 pounds of honey in a day!

Honey has been a significant part of our society for thousands of years. Used for healing and food, the honey is made by a simple process that nature has refined over thousands of years of use. It makes honeybees that much more important, not only as a pollination source, but as a food source when times are tough. Or if you just wanted a natural sweetener that will never expire.