How Do Bees Make Honey?
Foraging and Unloading Nectar

Foraging or worker bees leave the hive on a mission to go searching for nectar

Apis mellifera, common in the United States, actually have two separate stomachs -- one 'normal' stomach, and one 'honey stomach' which they use like a storage tank for transporting nectar.

The collector, always a female, navigates to a location rich with the plants currently producing nectar flow within approximately 4 miles of her beehive home.

Plants produce a sweet, liquid, a combination of sugar (sucrose) and water, to entice insects to visit and transport pollen grains from one flower to another for pollination.

The bee inserts her long, tubular tongue like a straw into each flower to extract the liquid plant-sugar and then stores it in her honey-stomach where enzymes begin breaking down the complex plant sugar into digestible simple sugars.

Because bees use nectar for food, they pollinate a variety of nectar-producing, flowering plants like fruit trees, berry bushes, melons, cucumbers, clover, and even dandelions.

Unloading the nectar to worker bees back at the beehive

When the individuals with full honey-stomachs return to the beehive to unload their liquid cargo, they transfer their cargo to worker bees or 'house bees' who extract the liquid by using their own tongue to siphon it from the honey stomach.

Foraging and Unloading the Nectar
Digest and Evaporate Nectar
Feed and Store Nectar