HONEY of a JOB

Older worker bees search for nectar rich flowers and drink it with their straw-like proboscis, then store it in a special stomach called a honey stomach (or crop) where the enzymes break down the nectar into simple sugars. When the honey stomach is full, the bee returns to the hive and regurgitates the nectar for younger hive bees to turn it into honey. After breaking it down further, the hive bees furiously beat their wings to evaporate any remaining water from the nectar. As water evaporates, the sugar thickens into honey. Then the hive bee caps the beeswax cell, sealing the honey for the future consumption of the bee colony.

A single bee produces only 1/12the of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, but thousands of bees working cooperatively can produce over 200 pounds for the colony within a year.

Today the honey bees landed on the stamen (as in this picture) and packed the pollen onto their corbicula (sacs on the sides of their back legs), while the bumble bees seemed to always go inside to the center of the flower where it attaches to the stem. They went about their collecting very differently - I wonder if the honey bees were collecting pollen (protein powder) while the bumblebees were after the nectar (sugary water) - both necessary food for the bees in the hive.