how do bees make honey?

Question

askNib · Accepted Answer

It starts with a bee visiting a flower, sipping up sweet watery nectar with her long tongue. She stores that nectar in a special pouch called the honey stomach, separate from her regular stomach — she carries it home. Back at the hive she passes the nectar mouth-to-mouth to another bee — this chewing and passing adds enzymes that change the sugar. The bee then spits the nectar into a wax honeycomb cell — a perfect little hexagon built just for storage. Bees fan the nectar with their wings, evaporating the water until it's thick, sticky honey — then they seal it with a wax cap to keep forever. Nectar sipped, passed, transformed, and dried into honey — a hive's whole winter pantry made from flowers and teamwork.