Everyone knows about the beneficial properties of the product produced by bees. Honey is just a storehouse of vitamins, amino acids and various trace elements. Since ancient times, people have loved to watch these hard-working insects, watch how bees collect honey, sitting on the flowers of honey plants.
In nature, bees before collecting nectar look for a secluded place to create wax cells. People also wanted to feast on honey, so they created insect-friendly houses - hives.
In the article, we will look at how nectar is collected, how viscous honey is obtained from it, who from the bee family is engaged in this important matter, we will find out how many plants a single bee needs to fly around to collect 100 g of honey.
Separation of duties in the hive
Up to 60, 000 insects can live in one hive. Everyone already has a certain role from birth. To grow the uterus, which is laying eggs, the bees feed it with royal jelly. When she grows up, she begins to eat harvested honey. Its role is only to lay fertilized eggs. It is larger than working bees. When it grows, it flies to another hive so that inbreeding does not occur.
There is also a drone uterus that lays unfertilized eggs. Drones grow out of them. These are males who do not even know how bees collect honey. Their duty is only to fertilize eggs.
The number of drones is small, only a couple of dozen. The rest of the bees are doing an important job. Working bees are all females. Young people, who are only a few days old, are engaged in cleaning the hive and feeding the larvae that have recently hatched from eggs. Bee adolescents who have reached the age of 10 days take part in the reception of a load of food brought by the other working toilers, which are called field workers. It is these bees that collect nectar and pollen from flowers.
Separation of worker bees
Among adult females, the distribution is as follows. Several working bees fly out for exploration, that is, they are looking for honey plants nearby.
When a beautiful place full of food was found, scouts returned to the hive and reported the discovery to the main detachment of field bees. There is an announcement with a kind of dance. Swirling in front of the rest of the females, scouts urge them to fly after them.
It is not necessary to persuade bees to pickers for a long time and they follow scouts who indicate the correct direction of flight. Having reached the right place, the bees are distributed by flowers and collect nectar by long proboscis.
Honey plants
In nature, there are a huge number of plants from which bees collect honey. Some of them are:
- flowering trees - quince, apricot, acacia, cherry, oak, willow, horse chestnut, maple, linden, plum, poplar, bird cherry, apple tree, birch;
- shrubs - lilac, dog rose, hawthorn, black currant, raspberry, heather, ledum, barberry, etc.;
- herbaceous plants - marshmallow, basil, watermelon, valerian, cornflower, sweet clover, oregano, St. John's wort, ivan tea, clover, alfalfa, coltsfoot, dandelion, lunatic, thyme, etc.
Who taught bees to collect honey
Many people think about this issue. However, there is no definite answer. Of course, bees act instinctively. It is already in nature that it is necessary to cook food “in reserve”, because bees make honey not for people who select it, but for their offspring, which must eat something, and reserves for the year round will also be useful to adults, because they bloom plants a short period.
How bees collect honey, consider in more detail below. Following the scouts, field bees by aroma find the necessary honey plant and sit on it more comfortably.
Sweet and liquid nectar is collected in a long, coiled tongue that hides in a proboscis. The bee has a peculiar structure. Insects have two stomachs. One they use in normal mode to digest their food. And the other is used as a warehouse for nectar. This capacity holds about 70 mg of substance. However, even to collect such an amount, the insect must fly around 1, 500 flowers. Returning back to the hive, the bee carries a weight almost equal to its own.
How honey is made from nectar
Chemists understand how bees make honey. Indeed, thanks to the chemical reaction, nectar turns into a viscous honey. After the return of the bee with a full stomach of nectar, the working bees pump it from the mouth of a field girlfriend, sucking it with proboscis. Some go to larvae and adolescents for food, but most bees are chewed for some time.
At this time, the chemical fermentation of nectar occurs. A substance called invertase is produced in the proboscis of a bee. It is an enzyme that processes sucrose into fructose and glucose. Then the bee blanks are laid out in honeycomb cells. There, another reaction occurs from liquid nectar with the help of oxygen - hydrolysis. Honey is considered a finished product when the moisture content is not more than 21%. In order for moisture to evaporate faster, the bees of the cells of the cells blow wings.
Scientists calculated: to collect 100 g of honey, a bee visits 1 million flowers. Accordingly, 0.0001 g of nectar is collected from one flower.
After separation of moisture, the syrup from nectar thickens and gains the consistency of honey. After that, the bees seal it in the combs with the help of wax, which is released from them by flakes from wax glands. It has a white color.
Why do bees collect pollen?
Observing bee researchers may notice a small ball on the hind leg of the bee while collecting nectar. Let's look at what it is.
Sitting on a flower, a field bee collects not only nectar, but also pollen. The pollen pollen forms in a special basket, which is located on the hind leg of the insect. Depending on the color of the pollen, the balls can be in completely different shades - from yellow to black. After collecting the material, the bee brings the load to the hive, the ball from the foot is carefully removed and lowered into a container with honey, and then sealed with wax.
Behind the dressing bees fly several times a day, spending up to two hours of their time. Why do bees need pollen, do they really lack honey? Let's take a closer look.
What do bees do with pollen
How the bees make honey, you already understand, now let's see why they needed pollen. Sitting on a flower, the bees are all smeared in it. Powdered paws, wings, fleecy body. Before departure, the bee gently combes its paws, on which there are many villi. Cleaning dust particles with “combs”, they store them in two containers on the hind legs. It is in this form that most often they return to their native hive.
Along with honey, pollen is food for bees, so they harvest it for the whole year, bringing each time 20 mg of pollen. It is very nutritious and contains many minerals, vitamins and proteins. But the pollen itself is not eaten by bees. This serves as flour. It is kneaded together with honey and such honey bread is fed by both larvae and adults for a year. This mixture is called perga.
It is very important to have a lot of bee bread in the hive; without it, the bees become weak and cannot work. Drones eat especially a lot of such food. Throughout the year, the bee family eats about 35 kg of pollen.
