18/12/2025
A friend asked me how much effort is involved for the bees to produce a 1lb jar of honey?
Well I said that’s a bit of a story; it’s a team effort. Tens of thousands of worker bees work seamlessly together to make it happen. The foraging bees will have to visit about 2 million flowers and or trees and bring the nectar back to the hive.
Some younger bees inside the hive will take the nectar, which has 90% water and process it to make it into honey, inside their honey stomach and inside the hive. The enzymes within the stomach react with the nectar and other natural substances, which has been extracted by the bees from the flowers, trees and from other sources. Natural substances like pollen and resin, which has all the colours of the rainbow and other secretions from the flora and fauna. This is called honey ripening. The water is evaporated off to reduce it down to typically less than 18% water content. Once this is achieved it is known as honey and the bees store it in wax honeycomb cells, which are capped off when full, to preserve it.
As you can see this takes a lot of work. Many other things have to come into play for this all to happen. The bees need a safe home to live in, which the beekeeper provides. The weather has to be amenable and surrounding natural environment abundant enough, for the bees to have sufficient resources to access at the right time. In Scotland the nectar flow starts in spring and ends in autumn with a few peaks and troughs in between. It’s best to have a wide diversity of flora so the nectar flow increases and decreases gradually and does not all come at one time. The bees smell the nectar and are very good at finding it. The plants use the nectar as a reward, so the bees visit them. The plants will have pollen which gets deposited on the bees. The bees groom themselves so the pollen gets put onto a location on their hind legs. This is so they can transport it back to the hive as another food source. As the bees go from plant to plant the pollen on their body rubs off and fertilises them. This means the plant can pro create and it’s secession is ensured. The seed is set, the fruit grows and other animals come and eat it; so it gets distributed. Hence renaturalisation occurs, the circle of life is complete.
So 2 million flowers and/or trees visited; plus countless other trips out out to get the other special ingredients in; to improve the honeys smell and flavour. Plus thousands of bee hours of processing.
Makes you think it’s a miracle they can even make it happen, but that’s what bees like doing and do best. That’s what they have evolved over millions of years to do.
This is why practically each jar of artisan honey from your local beekeeper is so unique, due to all the influences and factors it has experienced during its making. So that’s the effort that the bees have to put in to make it happen. What the beekeeper has to do to get it to you is another story.
That’s it for now until next time.
Your local beekeeper Ken
