What is the first thing collected by bees to make honey?

Honey starts as flower nectar collected by bees, which gets broken down into simple sugars stored inside the honeycomb. The design of the honeycomb and constant fanning of the bees’ wings causes evaporation, creating sweet liquid honey.

How long does it take for bees to build a honey comb?

On average it will take between 7 days to 2 months for bees to produce comb and fill it with honey. But a strong established colony, during a strong honey flow, can draw out a full 10 frame deep box and fill it with honey in as little as 3 days.

How do bees start a honeycomb?

Honeycombs are made from beeswax, a substance created by worker bees. When the temperature is right, worker bees secrete wax scales from special glands in their body. Then they chew the wax with a bit of honey and pollen to produce the beeswax.

What do bees do with the nectar they collect?

Most bees gather only pollen or nectar. As she sucks the nectar from the flower, it is stored in her special honey stomach ready to be transferred to the honey-making bees in the hive. When her nectar “sacs” are full, the honeybee returns to the hive.

What do the bees do to make the nectar in the comb thicker?

The bees fan the combs and move air across them to evaporate the water. The nectar, which was about 80\% water and 20\% sugar, becomes 20\% water and 80\% sugar. As the content dips below 20\%, it’s become much thicker and stickier and is finally considered honey.

Why is a honeycomb shaped like a hexagon?

Hexagons are useful shapes. They can hold the queen bee’s eggs and store the pollen and honey the worker bees bring to the hive. “The geometry of this shape uses the least amount of material to hold the most weight,” she said. It takes the bees quite a bit of work to make the honeycomb.

What kind of mathematics is involved in honeycomb?

In geometry, a honeycomb is a space filling or close packing of polyhedral or higher-dimensional cells, so that there are no gaps. It is an example of the more general mathematical tiling or tessellation in any number of dimensions.

Where do bees collect nectar from?

Bees collect nectar from flowers. Nectar is the sweet liquid that entices the bees to the flower. The bees climb onto or into the flower and suck up the nectar with their straw-like mouth and collect it in a little sac called a crop. They also collect pollen on their legs.