How Honey Is Made

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

What does a bee family give to a person?

Each of us had to watch how on a warm sunny day a bee circled over flowers, from which it collects drops of nectar, which turns into honey, known to all of us. Even ancient doctors and philosophers called bee honey a wonderful gift of nature, in the creation of which bees and flowers participate.

While appreciating honey, they not without reason believed that it is a product that contributes to human longevity. Modern science has proven that the complex composition of honey involves over 100 compounds of different value for the body (vitamins, carbohydrates, enzymes, organic acids, trace elements, mineral, hormonal, antibacterial and other substances). Honey contains everything necessary for normal human life (for example, blood contains 24 trace elements, of which there are 22 in honey). It has antibacterial, anti-mold and preservative properties. In a word, it is the environment in which it is impossible for various pathogenic bacteria and microbes to exist, at the same time being an environment where vitamins are stored for a long time. Besides honey,a person receives from bees and other products of their vital activity, which in their natural form in nature do not occur and there is no equivalent substitute for them to this day.

Many, probably, have also heard about other biologically active products of beekeeping (royal jelly, pollen, bee bread, propolis, homogenate of drone brood and bee venom), which are widely used in medicine, cosmetic and food industries. How do hardworking bees manage to turn nectar into miraculous honey?

They spend their entire short life in tireless and very useful work for a person. Sometimes beekeepers joke: "the bees are deprived of their childhood", which they really are. At the age of up to three days, they already monitor the sanitary condition of the wax cells, cleaning the walls and bottoms of the honeycomb cells after the young bees emerge from them, and from the fourth day they feed the older larvae with a mixture of honey and pollen, and begin to make tentative flights around the hive. From the 7th day, their maxillary glands begin to work, secreting milk, with which they feed the queen bees and the larvae of future queens and bees.

From 12-18 days of life, bees begin to build combs, as wax glands begin to act in them (located on the last four abdominal half rings). They are on guard duty and work as receptionists for nectar. In addition, they maintain heat near the brood, being a kind of living blanket: they make sure that the future generation of bees develops normally and that there is good ventilation in the hive.

At the age of 15-18 days, bees begin their most important duty: collecting nectar and pollen. Every day, worker bees go out for exploration - in search of abundant sources of nectar and pollen - flowering plants and water. By the way, bees, regardless of the movement of the sun, atmospheric conditions and location, have a chronometrically precise sense of time. They fly up to flowering plants only at a time when they can get nectar or pollen. Scientists conducted an experiment: bees, accustomed to take sweet water in Paris (in a room devoid of natural light), were brought by plane to New York. It turned out that there (under artificial light) the bees left the hive for sweet water at exactly the same time as in Paris, although the time difference between these two cities was 5 hours.

With its proboscis, the bee takes nectar from the flower and gradually fills its honey ventricle (goiter) with it, after which it flies into its hive (often at a decent speed). Even with a load equal to 75% of her body weight, she is able to reach speeds of up to 30 km / h, and "empty" - will compete with a fast train (over 65 km / h). To obtain 1 kg of honey, a bee needs to visit about 10 million honey flowers and bring 120-150 thousand portions of nectar to the hive. If the flowers from which the bee takes bribes are 1.5 km from the hive, then the toiler bee, flying 3 km with each load, will have to travel from 360 to 450 thousand km (i.e., overcome a distance exceeding 8, 5-11 times the circumference of the globe along the equator).

In the goiter of the bee, a droplet of nectar thickens, which decreases in volume, since the cells of the honey ventricle absorb water. In addition, in the body of the bee, nectar is enriched with enzymes, organic acids, antibacterial substances. In the hive, the bee is freed from its valuable cargo by its winged sisters (nectar receivers), which keep it for some time in their honey ventricles, where the nectar continues to undergo complex processing, which began in the body of the collecting bee. From time to time, the receiving bee spreads the upper jaw and pushes the proboscis forward and down slightly, on the surface of which a drop of nectar appears. Then she swallows this drop again, and hides the proboscis. This procedure is repeated 120-240 times. Having found a free wax cell, the receiving bee lays a drop of nectar. But this is not the final formation of this processed product into honey: other bees will continue the difficult work of converting nectar into honey. If the receiving bees are already loaded with work, then the collecting bees hang their load (a drop of nectar) from the upper wall of the wax cell. This is a rather interesting and practically important technique: having a large evaporation surface, hanging drops evaporate moisture faster (40-80% water in nectar, 18-20% in ready-made honey).in finished honey 18-20%.).in finished honey 18-20%.).

To remove excess water in the nectar (almost 75%), bees transfer each drop from one wax cell to another until most of it evaporates and the unripe honey (semi-finished product) becomes thick. Many bees are busy with every drop. By flapping their wings (26,400 strokes per minute), they create excellent air circulation in the hive, facilitating the evaporation process. After filling the wax cells with honey to the top, the bees seal them with wax caps, after which the honey can be stored for many years. During the summer season, a bee colony is able to collect up to 150 kg of honey. Besides nectar, bees collect a large amount of pollen, moisten it with saliva mixed with nectar, and put it in "baskets" (special devices on the hind legs). It is known that the number and balance of essential amino acids,of vitamins and minerals, pollen surpasses most food products (its use increases the number of erythrocytes by 25-30%, hemoglobin by 15%).

The pollen brought to the hive is placed in honeycomb cells and poured with honey, after which it turns into bee bread (bee bread), unusually rich in complete proteins, essential amino and fatty acids, carbohydrates, vitamins and other biologically active substances. Its use by a person helps to increase the immunobiological properties and improve the adaptive abilities of the body, reduce fatigue, etc.

On a sunny day in summer in the apiary you can feel the wonderful aroma of flowers, honey and wax, but the pleasant resinous smell of propolis ("bee glue"), a brownish-greenish substance, stands out especially sharply. With the help of propolis, pulmonary tuberculosis, pneumonia, sore throat, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, chemical and thermal burns, difficult healing ulcers and wounds, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, etc. are treated.

The bees feed the queen and the bees with royal milk (a creamy milky substance with a pearlescent hue), which in some countries is even called "royal jelly". Natural royal milk containing up to 18% protein, 10-17% sugar, up to 5.55% fat and more than 1% mineral salts (comparable to cow's milk: on average it contains 3.3% protein, 4% fat, 4.6 % sugar), which is good for human health. The products of their vital activity, the "queen" queen, and even their lives, the worker bees have to protect from many enemies. To resist uninvited "guests", Nature has endowed them with a complex stinging apparatus, which is located under the last abdominal ring of the insect, and provided them with a rather strong poison.

First of all, the natural purpose of this poisonous weapon is against other insects: the bee does not lose its sting and does not suffer any damage. But if it stings a person or animals with elastic skin, then it loses its "weapon" (it comes off from the tip of the abdomen) and after a while dies: the sting breaks off when trying to pull it back, since it is equipped with the thinnest (facing back) notches (it turns out that the bee pays with his life). Since ancient times, bee venom, possessing preventive properties, is a highly effective remedy in the treasury of traditional medicine and is highly valued in the treatment of certain human diseases. Let us also recall the benefits of bees as pollinators of most entomophilous plants in our zone, because without cross-pollination, the fruits of apple, pear, sweet cherry, cherry, plum are not formed,apricot, raspberry and many other cultivated plants.