Photo: Worker bees with capped brood (brown), open brood (white larva), all sorts of coloured pollen and shiny fresh nectar. Cooper Schouten, Author provided
Cooper Schouten, Southern Cross University
How do bees make honey? Finn, age 7, Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Hi Finn, that’s a sweet question!
Well, when we talk about “bees”, we’re usually referring to the European honey bee (its scientific name is Apis Mellifera). Humans have been drooling over its honey and taking advantage of its pollination powers for thousands of years.
So how do these insects make honey, you ask? You’ll find the task is one requiring teamwork and organisation.
Busy buzzing bees
You probably already know about the most important ingredient needed to make honey: flowers.
A colony of bees can visit up to 50 million flowers each day, with as many as 60,000 bees in each colony. They’re not called busy bees for nothing!
Honey bees work together as a team to make decisions about where the best flowers are. They communicate with each other using bumps, noises and even dance moves known as the waggle dance.
All bees during their life have different roles, depending on how old they are. To make honey, worker honey bees fly up to 5km searching for flowers and their sweet nectar. Usually, they’ll visit between 50 and 100 flowers per trip.
