Bees are unique insects producing honey. But many do not know the process of extracting the product. The article discusses all the moments of honey extraction, why bees do this, and how nectar turns into honey. It will be especially interesting for beginning beekeepers who want to engage in insect breeding.
Why do bees make honey?
Honey is food for all members of the bee family. Insects eat them not only in winter, but also in summer. When the cold season begins, the inhabitants of the hive uncork cells and are saturated with a high-calorie honey product, which provides them with the necessary energy.
Then the insects begin to flap their wings actively, which helps to maintain an optimal climate in the home. Rastrata of energy received at the required temperature, require bees to recover as soon as possible - insects need food. In addition to honey, toilers need a bee bread called “bee bread” - it replaces protein.
A bee family can have more than a couple thousand individuals in need of large reserves for the winter. Due to the fact that insects are thrifty and prudent, most of the bee stocks are a valuable food product for humans. Experienced beekeepers who care about the well-being of their bee colonies leave the required amount of honey in the hive for the winter so that the toilers can live until spring and not die - they take the rest.
Beekeepers who think only of profitability immediately collect all the supplies, and the bees are fed sugar. But this product cannot become a complete food for insects, since it lacks the necessary vitamins, minerals and enzymes. Because of this, the bees, eating syrup, become weak, their endurance and performance is significantly reduced. When warm days come, it is difficult for the insects to fully begin collecting honey.
The vitamins contained in honey not only contribute to the maintenance of the body's vital functions, but also ensure the proper functioning of the secretory glands that produce wax - the material used to build honeycombs.
How do bees make honey and turn it into nectar?
The passage of a chemical reaction promotes the conversion of nectar into a viscous honey. After the bees return with a full stomach of nectar, working insects suck it from the mouth of the field worker with their proboscis. Some of the bees are left to feed on larvae and young individuals, but most of the insects are chewed for some time. This is the chemical fermentation of nectar.
Nectar is exposed to a variety of enzymes that make up the saliva of bees, turning into a healthy sweet. When processing occurs, the excess liquid evaporates, and sucrose, under the influence of a special enzyme (invertase), is broken down into fructose and glucose - they are easily absorbed by the body. Finished products contain only 5% sucrose. In addition, bee saliva has a bactericidal effect, due to which stocks can be stored for a long time.
To ensure the evaporation of moisture, the workers transfer the sweet liquid to the cells, filling them 2/3, then they begin to work actively on the porch to raise the temperature in the home. The processors place the processed product in special hexagonal cells and tightly pack them with wax caps, which avoids the penetration of air and moisture, because this can lead to fermentation. In honeycombs, honey is ripening further.
After separation of moisture, the nectar syrup becomes thick, acquires the consistency of honey.
Perga insects are also placed in honeycombs. Distinctive characteristics of the storages are their shades - honeycombs are dominated by dark yellow, almost brown, and pergovy by light yellow. Production lasts from 7 to 14 days. Product quality directly depends on the moisture content: the less water in honey, the better it is.
In intense heat, the sweet liquid secreted by the aphids, which is called the paddy, is mixed with nectar. This has led to the name of such low-grade honey - honeydew. Also, sweet juice of plants called honey dew can be added to the honey product. Food from the paddy and honeydew is dangerous for bees, as it has a negative effect on metabolic processes.
How the bees collect honey can be seen in an interesting video. Here it is described in detail how insects collect honey, with what they do it, and what happens next:
Stages of honey extraction
Honey collection is the main occupation of bees, because all their work is necessarily directed to ensure this process. To do this, all responsibilities are clearly distributed among all members of the bee family.
How does this happen:
- The uterus lays eggs, thereby ensuring the extension of the bee genus. Scouts go in search of honey plants, and worker bees build honeycombs, collect pollen and nectar. Even newborn bees are busy with work - they feed the larvae, clean the dwelling and maintain the optimum temperature in it.
- Bees get nectar from the flowers of honey plants. Workers begin work in the spring when the flowering of plants begins. Scouts are the first to “hunt” - a well-developed sense of smell allows you to quickly find flowering plants, take nectar from them and return home.
- In the home, the bees tell their family members where the plant is located from which to collect nectar. Bees communicate in peculiar dance movements. Then scouts and bee-pickers go to the found place.
- Toilers collect honey with a proboscis, which easily penetrates into the flower. The insect can easily recognize the taste of liquids using receptors - they are located on the paws.
- A bee sits on a plant, absorbs nectar with a proboscis, and begins to collect pollen from its hind limbs, on which special brushes are located, and then makes a ball from it. This lump is placed in a special basket located on the lower leg of the insect. One such ball can be obtained after collecting nectar from many plants.
Bees are insects that have two stomachs. In one of them, food is digested, and the second serves as a storehouse for the accumulation of nectar - it contains about 70 mg of nectar. But if a toiler is required to make a long-distance flight, she spends about 25-30% of the reserves to restore the spent forces. A working bee can fly up to 8 km per day, but long-distance flights can be dangerous for her. The optimal distance for honey collection is 2-3 km.
In this case, the insect can process about 12 hectares of the field. To fill the collection of nectar, a bee needs to fly around one and a half thousand plants, and to collect 1 kilogram of nectar - from 50 to 150 thousand flights.
During the collection of honey, insects are completely wrapped in pollen. Then, after flying around, the bees carry pollen and pollinate the flowers, ensuring the reproduction of plants and contributing to high yields. After filling the collections with nectar, the pickers return to the hive, where they transmit the nectar to the receiving bees. Insects are engaged in precise distribution: some are left to feed the larvae, the rest are sent for processing.
Honey Bee Production
When nectar appears in the insect's mouth, the bee fills it with its own secretion from the salivary gland. The secret is rich in many different enzymes that turn nectar into a healthy and tasty honey product.
Features of breeding and the amount of honey
The amount of honey collected can vary greatly depending on the region, the location of the apiary, weather, breed of bees and care for them, honey plants growing nearby. If the previous winter was very cold, and spring came late, the bee family will collect much less product than usual. Favorable conditions (warm and humid air) contributes to the collection of large quantities of honey.
Especially the bee breed affects the volume of honey collection. But when choosing a breed, it is required to take into account the region and the climatic features of the area. For some areas it is better to choose a Carpathian bee, for others - Central Russian. Also, the size and quality of the hive affects the amount of product obtained. It is optimal to choose multihull houses. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that not all cells are filled with stocks, free cells should always be present in stock.
It is important that the beekeeper has experience in breeding bees, as well as properly caring for insects. An experienced beekeeper can only keep strong families and high-quality, prolific queens. So he provides optimal conditions for their life, breeding and wintering, constantly monitors the hive’s hull and its frames, installs additional honeycombs, prevents the bees from swarming and, if necessary, takes the apiary to another place, where there are melliferous grasses, bushes or trees.
Usually one pumping from the hive allows you to get 13-18 kilograms of a unique product. With a very hot or rainy summer, the performance drops significantly - up to 10 pounds. Favorable conditions contribute to the collection of up to 200 kg of healthy sweets from one bee family.
Honey collection is the main occupation of bees. Insects are fully laid out, devote their energies to collecting nectar and further procuring honey products. Each bee from a large family performs certain functions, but at the same time they still have a common goal - collecting nectar and processing it into healthy honey.
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Ukraine. City: Kryvyi Rih
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