Why do bees pick flowers to make honey?

"Silkworms spin silk and bees make honey" is a natural phenomenon that many people know, but few people know why bees pick flowers to make honey. In fact, the behavior of any creature in nature is not aimless, and there must be some reason to drive them to do so. Let's see why bees pick flowers to make honey!

1. Why do bees collect honey?

The reason why bees gather flowers to make honey is to store food for bees. It comes from the fact that bees feed entirely on flowers in nature. In beekeeping, these plants for bees to collect nectar are called nectar source plants, but the nectar circulation period of nectar source plants will be affected by climate, season and other factors. For example, there is basically no nectar from nectar plants in winter. Even if there is nectar from nectar plants, bees may not be able to collect it normally due to heavy rain, strong wind and other reasons. At this time, bees will use the stored honey to maintain a normal life.

Second, how do bees collect honey?

Before bees go out to collect honey, they usually send a large number of reconnaissance bees to find the source of honey. After finding the honey source, the reconnaissance bees will collect some nectar and share it with other worker bees. At the same time, they will indicate the direction and distance of honey source through "bee dance", and then bees will send a large number of collecting bees to collect. In order to improve the collection efficiency, bees have a set of professional tools, that is, tubular mouthparts that can absorb nectar and flower paintings and pollen frames specially formed with their feet. After collection, bees will bring back nectar and pollen.

3. How do bees make honey?

It is an extremely complicated process for bees to brew honey. In fact, when bees collect nectar, they will mix saliva containing invertase into honey juice. Strictly speaking, honey brewing has begun. After the collected bees return to their nests, they will pass the collected nectar to the bees in the office. The bees in the office will increase more invertase by opening and closing the folded part of the beak end, which will speed up the honey concentration. When the honey brewing process is over, the office bees will temporarily store the honey in the nest room, but the sucrose in the honey will be converted and the honey will be concentrated.

4. How do bees store honey?

It takes about 7 days for honey to be fully brewed and matured. At this time, the worker bees will secrete wax and seal the wax. This is what people often say. Mature honey has the nutrients that honey should have. As long as it is properly preserved, it will never go bad. But at present, most of the honey sold in the market is concentrated honey. What is concentrated honey? Simply put, honey manufacturers buy a lot of immature honey from beekeepers and concentrate it at high temperature. Some of these immature honey have been brewed by bees for only 1 ~ 2 days, which is very different from real mature honey.

Summary: It is a very complicated process for bees to collect flowers and make honey. On the one hand, bees spend the honey shortage season by brewing honey, on the other hand, beekeepers also gain benefits by harvesting honey. But from the perspective of bees alone, collecting flowers and making honey is just an act of storing food.