From Bee to Bottle: How Honey Is Made

Honey – some see it as a term of endearment while others prefer to use this golden goo as a sweet addition to their food and drink. Ancient civilizations even used it to placate their gods.

Today, there are about 320 different kinds of honey, which vary in color, smell and flavor. But they’ve all got one thing in common: bees. Honeybees produce this miracle substance from nothing more than flower nectar.

Read on to learn more about how honey is made, what bees use it for, our history with honey and much more.

What Is the History of Honey?

Humans have utilized honey for millennia. The oldest evidence linking us with honeybees dates back nearly 9,000 years to present-day Turkey.

Meanwhile, the earliest record of keeping bees in hives was discovered in Egypt’s sun temple, which was constructed in 2400 BC. Honey was important in ancient Egyptian culture – they used it as a sweetener, as a gift to their gods and as an ingredient in embalming fluid.

Ancient Greek and Roman societies also celebrated honey. The Greeks, like the Egyptians, offered honey cakes to their gods. They also used the sweet sticky stuff as a healing medicine and as an ingredient in cheesecakes. Later, Romans used it as a gift to their gods and as an ingredient in foods.

Because of honey’s importance in many societies throughout history, it has been used in various imagery. For instance, in Spain, a few cave paintings depicting humans gathering honey date back 7,500 to 8,000 years. Pope Urban VIII used the bee as his emblem, and it served as the symbol of the Greek goddess Artemis. Bees also appeared frequently in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

See more: 9 Fascinating Facts About Honeybees

What Is Honey Used For Today?

Honey is best known for its uses as a natural sweetener. It can be added to dishes as an alternative to sugar, used to flavor tea, and utilized as an alternative to other syrups, among other things. Check out a few of our favorite recipes featuring honey, including Whole-Grain Carrot Muffins, French Toast, Peachy Keen Crumbler and more.

Honey also has a number of medicinal uses, according to the Mayo Clinic. In addition to sugar, it contains a mix of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, iron, zinc and antioxidants. As such, it is used as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antibacterial agent. Studies have even linked it with the improvement of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and neurological diseases. Some varieties can also work as a cough suppressant or to help heal wounds.

How Do Bees Make Honey?

You may be wondering just how bees make honey. It’s a process that requires cooperation between different types of honeybees, including workers and house bees.

The process starts with the workers. Nectar is the main ingredient, and these diligent bees fly up to 3.1 miles a day to gather it from flowers using their long, straw-like tongues to slurp it up. When the nectar reaches a worker bee’s stomach, it begins to break down complex sugars into simple sugars, which are less prone to crystallization.

Then, when the worker returns to its colony, it passes the nectar on to a house bee, who transports it into hexagon-shaped beeswax cells. The bees then transform the nectar into honey by drying it. They do this by creating a warm breeze with their wing power. After the honey has dried, the bees use fresh beeswax to seal it off until winter.

See more: Illinois Beekeepers Work to Protect Honeybees and Educate Their Communities

How Much Honey Do Bees Make?

The amount of honey produced by a colony is dependent on environmental factors like temperature, wind, rainfall and humidity, as well as how many bees there are and how much ventilation the hive has.

That said, a single bee will produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey over its lifetime, and it takes 2 million flower visits for one colony to produce about a pound of honey.

See more: A Few Things You May Not Know About Tennessee Honeybees

What do Bees Use Honey For?

So why do honeybees go through all of this? In winter, when flowers are finished blooming and nectar is in short supply, the colony can feed on all the honey that it saved over the warmer months.

How Do Beekeepers Extract Honey From the Hive?

Most supermarket honey comes from bees living in manmade hives. Beekeepers use specialized equipment, including a hot knife to scrape the wax from the cells, a fine mesh strainer to remove dirt and debris, and a tray to catch wax caps once removed.

After ensuring the honey is ready for harvest, the keeper removes frames from each hive and scrapes the wax off using their heated knife. Then, they place the frames in a special machine called an extractor, which forces honey out of the comb. After extracting the honey, beekeepers strain it to remove impurities. Then they can fill containers – usually plastic bottles or glass jars – with the fresh honey. Generally, beekeepers may allow it to sit for 24 to 48 hours before bottling to decrease the number of air bubbles.

Are Beekeepers Harming Bees by Taking Honey?

Bees can produce more honey than is needed to sustain their colony over the winter, so beekeepers argue that taking the excess causes little harm to the bees. Others say that bees have to make up for the loss to replace what is taken and argue that bees become overworked. However you look at it, beekeepers help support local honeybee populations by raising and maintaining healthy hives.

Meanwhile, organizations like the National Honey Board work to advance bee health. For instance, the group is supporting research and offering funding for issues like Colony Collapse Disorder, colony losses due to hurricanes and disease prevention. This work is critically important since honeybees don’t just produce honey for us to enjoy. Each time a bee visits a flower, it also helps with pollination and supports native plants as well as our food systems.

See more: 7 Ways to Attract Pollinators to Your Garden

Which Countries Produce the Most Honey?

In 2022, China led the way, producing more than 461,000 metric tons of honey that year. This was more than four times the amount produced in Turkey, the second-leading producer. Other top producers are Iran, India and Argentina.

On the other hand, the U.S. is the world’s leading importer of honey and gets most of it from India, Vietnam and Argentina.