How Do Bees Make Honey?

Step 1: Foraging for Nectar

The journey begins when a forager bee—a worker bee at least 3 weeks old—leaves the hive in search of flowers. She may travel up to 5 miles, though most foraging happens within 1-2 miles of the hive.

When she finds a flower with nectar, she extends her proboscis (a long, straw-like tongue) deep into the blossom. Nectar is a sugary liquid that flowers produce specifically to attract pollinators—it's essentially plant bribe for a delivery service.

A single forager may visit 50-1,000 flowers per trip, collecting a payload of nectar that weighs almost as much as she does. Once her honey stomach is full—about 40 milligrams—she returns to the hive.

Step 2: The Honey Stomach

Bees have two stomachs—a regular digestive stomach and a specialized honey stomach (also called a crop or honey sac). The honey stomach is essentially a storage tank that can expand to hold nectar for transport.

A valve called the proventriculus separates the honey stomach from the true stomach. This allows the bee to keep nectar for honey-making while still being able to open the valve and digest some for her own energy needs during the flight home.

Step 3: Processing in the Hive

When the forager returns to the hive, she doesn't deposit nectar directly into a cell. Instead, she regurgitates it into the mouth of a house bee—a younger worker who stays inside the hive.

This begins an elaborate process called trophallaxis (mouth-to-mouth food transfer). The house bee chews the nectar for about 20 minutes, repeatedly exposing it to air and adding more enzymes. She may then pass it to another house bee, who continues the process.

By the time the nectar is deposited into a honeycomb cell, it has been processed by multiple bees and significantly transformed from its original state. The enzymatic conversion of sucrose to glucose and fructose is well underway.

Step 4: Evaporation and Ripening

Fresh nectar is about 70-80% water—far too wet to store without fermenting. Honey needs to be under 18% water to be shelf-stable. How do bees remove all that water?

Spreading and Fanning

House bees spread the watery nectar across honeycomb cells in thin layers, maximizing surface area for evaporation. They also station themselves throughout the hive and fan their wings vigorously—up to 200 beats per second—creating airflow that carries moisture away.

On warm nights, you can often hear this fanning from outside the hive. The bees work around the clock, maintaining airflow and controlled humidity. In a sense, the hive functions as a giant dehydrator.

During this time, enzymatic reactions continue. The final honey has a pH around 3.5-4.5 (acidic), high sugar concentration, and trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide—all of which make it inhospitable to bacteria and fungi.

Step 5: Capping and Storage

How do bees know when honey is "done"? They test it. Bees can sense the moisture content of honey—when it drops below about 18%, they seal the cell with a thin layer of beeswax called a capping.

The wax cap serves multiple purposes: it prevents the honey from absorbing moisture from the air (honey is hygroscopic), protects it from contamination, and signals to the colony that this cell contains finished, storable food.

For beekeepers, capped honey is the signal to harvest. Uncapped cells may contain unripe nectar that will ferment if extracted.

Why Do Bees Make Honey?

Honey isn't made for humans—it's the colony's survival food. Bees produce and store honey during times of plenty (spring and summer flower blooms) so they have food during times of scarcity (winter, droughts, rainy periods).

A healthy colony in a temperate climate needs 60-90 pounds of honey to survive winter, when flowers aren't blooming and bees can't forage. The honey provides:

• Energy – Carbohydrates fuel the bees' metabolism and flight muscles
• Heat – Winter bees cluster and vibrate their muscles to generate warmth, consuming honey as fuel
• Survival buffer – Extra stores carry the colony through unexpected hardships

When we harvest honey, we're essentially taking the colony's emergency food supply. Responsible beekeepers only harvest the surplus—the amount beyond what bees need to survive.

By the Numbers

The scale of honey production is staggering when you break it down:

When you eat a spoonful of honey, you're consuming the life's work of dozens of bees and the nectar of thousands of flowers. That's pretty remarkable for something that costs a few dollars at the store.

A Process Perfected Over Millions of Years

Bees have been making honey for at least 100 million years—far longer than humans have existed. The process we've described has been refined by evolution into an incredibly efficient system that turns dilute flower nectar into a perfectly preserved, energy-dense food.

As a beekeeper, understanding this process gives you deeper appreciation for your colonies' work—and helps you make better management decisions. You're not just "keeping" bees; you're partnering with a superorganism that has mastered biochemistry on a scale we're only beginning to understand.

Next time you taste honey, consider the journey: from flower to forager, through enzymes and evaporation, fanned and ripened by thousands of tiny workers, sealed in wax for safekeeping. It's liquid gold, earned one tiny drop at a time.