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Sweet, sweet honey

		‘Strong yet aromatic’, ‘pungent and bold’, ‘mild’, ‘malty aftertaste’, ‘mellow undertones’ and 'bold'. Words one would normally associate with a sensuous wine tasting session, yet can just as easily hold their place describing the wonderful array of honeys that the humble honeybee can produce.Around 1.2 million tonnes of honey are produced worldwide each year and when you consider that one tiny bee produces only a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, it’s a rather miraculous process.
		"Worker bees use a pattern of ‘dancing’ known as the Waggle Dance to communicate information to each other regarding the best nectar gathering spots"

So how do we end up with such a delectable and vast variety of this natural and sweet delight?

To make any type of honey, bees fly out from their hive, collecting nectar, pollen and water. The bees collect the pollen on their hind legs in a basket like area that has special hair to hold the pollen in place while they transport it back to the hive. They use their long tongues like straws to suck the nectar out of the flowers, storing it in their stomachs to carry it to the beehive. While inside the bee's stomach for about half an hour, the nectar mixes with the proteins and enzymes produced by the bees, converting the nectar into honey.

The bees’ then drop the honey into the beeswax comb, which are hexagonal cells made of wax produced by the bees. To prepare for long-term storage, the bees fan their wings to evaporate and thicken the honey and when satisfied, the bees cap the honeycomb with wax and move on to the next empty comb, starting all over.

This all sounds like a relatively straightforward process, but just like any working society, there are a myriad of hierarchies, procedures and protocols that are at play.

A colony generally contains one queen bee (a fertile female); up to a few thousand fertile male bees and a large population of sterile female worker bees. Young worker bees clean the hive and feed the larvae with royal jelly from their glands. They progress to other colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers (honey scouts and collectors), and guarding the hive. A worker then graduates to take her first orientation flight and finally leaves the hive for her final role as a forager.

With the mid summer population of a healthy hive averaging between 40,000 and 80,000 bees, the colony needs some form of effective communication to keep the show running smoothly. In a much more active and romantic fashion than human’s use of cell phones or emails, the workers communicate using a language of dance and vibration. Worker bees use a pattern of ‘dancing’ known as the Waggle Dance to communicate information to each other regarding the best nectar gathering spots. If the plants are very close to the hive, they may do a dance commonly known as the Round Dance. Bees also perform Tremble dances which recruit receiver bees to collect nectar from returning foragers.

Bees live in colonies that are often maintained, fed, and transported by beekeepers, whose job it is to harvest the honey and provide a place for the colony to live and to store honey in. The modern beehive is made up of a series of square or rectangular boxes, without tops or bottoms, which are placed one on top of another. Modern hives enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as the crop needs pollinating.To harvest the honey, beekeepers lift the trays of honeycomb, spin them in a drum, allowing the honey to be extracted with minimal damage to the actual honeycomb. These trays are then returned to the hive, saving the bees the intensive task of rebuilding the honeycomb structure.

What we end up with at the end of this laborious and complex process, is that ‘sweet’, ‘delicious’ and ‘smooth’ delight we know and love. So there you have it, the buzz on exactly how this naturally nutritious food comes to bee. From wild hives to manmade, honey will always be in sweet demand.

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Sweet, sweet honey