How do Bees Produce Honey?

A honeybee colony consists of a queen bee, the thousands of worker bees and hundreds of drones. Living together, a honeybee colony conducts all of its activities in the hive, within combs made of beeswax secreted by the bees.

Honey is obtained by the nectar being processed by various enzymes secreted by the bees and transformed into a long-lasting, dense and highly nutritious food.

A bee has to visit flowers approximately 1500 times to fill its honey stomach, and approximately 180,000 times to produce 1 gr. of honey. As for the bee's performance; a flying bee needs half a gram of honey per kilometer, in other words 1 liter of honey per 3 million kilometers. To produce 1 kg of honey for the market shelves, the bee colony has to spend 8 kg of honey and fly a distance equivalent to 6 times around the world. Moreover, the bees, while doing this, contribute greatly to the continuation of the natural life. Most of the plants reproduce by pollinating by the help of the bees.

• Bees have been producing honey for 20 million years...
  


• To produce one kg. of honey, 30 thousand bees have to collect nectar from 20 million flowers...
  


• Bees fly a distance equivalent to 6 times the perimeter of Earth to collect the nectar for 1 kg. of honey from flowers...
  


• Bees, aside from producing honey, have very important contributions for the continuity of natural life; plants are able to reproduce with the help of bees...
  


• The 13 kg. of honey found in Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt has not been spoiled for 3,800 years...
  


• The famous doctor, Hippocrates, who has lived 400 years before Christ, used honey for medical purposes...
  


• Honey was also used for medical purposes in the ancient Indian, Egyptian, Roman, Sumerian, Babylonian and Hittite civilizations...
  


• The antibacterial properties of honey were discovered by the Assyrians...
  


• Apiculture has been performed as an agricultural activity since the first age...
  


• Today, Apitherapy centers are being established in many countries, especially in China, aiming to cure diseases using apicultural products...
  


• The first known Turkish apicultural textbook was written in 1912 by Mehmet Ali Bey, who was an instructor in Halkalı Agricultural School, and the book was named "Ameli ve Nazari Arıcılık" (Practical and Theoretical Apiculture)...
  


• Honey should not be heated over 45°C, otherwise it may lose some of its nutritive properties...
  


• Honey is beneficial for children's physical development but it is unsiutable for children under 12 months to eat honey...