Bee Barf and Bee Sweat

Barfing?

Working female honey bees visit a variety of flowers to sip nectar and gather grains of pollen on their hairy back legs, pollinating the blossoms in the process. The sugary nectar and the pollen become their food. Each bee swallows the nectar into her special stomach where it is stored as she gathers more nectar to take home.

When her stomach is full, each bee buzzes home. On the way, enzymes in that stomach change the nectar to honey, which the bee regurgitates into a waxy, six-sided cell. When each cell is full of honey, it is capped with wax and the honey inside is stored to be consumed by worker bees and their queen through the coming winter.

Wax cells are made by female worker bees eating honey and oozing some of that modified honey through pores in their exoskeletons (which is like a hard skin). The workers scrape that waxy substance from their bodies to make honey storage and brood cells. Scientists learned that six-sided cells that insects make are the strongest of shapes and the most efficient use of space.

In winter, worker bees form a ball of themselves with the queen in the middle in their tree hollow, hive or other home. There the workers quiver their wings, in shifts, which causes friction, and creates warmth. The workers eat stored honey to have the energy to move their wings to keep themselves and the queen warm until spring.

These are a few facts about honey bees that most people don't think much about. All forms of life have intriguing secrets to tell if we would take the time to experience them.

Photo courtesy of Peter Shanks