How honey is made

Gather the nectar

A forager drinks nectar into its honey stomach, which holds about 40 mg. Filling it can take visits to more than a thousand flowers. The nectar is 70 to 80 percent water.

Pass it mouth to mouth

Back at the hive, workers take the nectar and pass it along in a relay, repeatedly forming bubbles between their mandibles. It can take as long as 20 minutes of this regurgitating, digesting and evaporating before the product is fit for storage.

Fan off the water

The bees spread the drops in open wax cells, then beat their wings. The hive runs at around 35 °C, and the evaporation continues until the water content is between 15.5 and 18 percent.

15.5 to 18% water

Cap the cells with wax

When the honey is ripe the bees seal each cell with a lid of beeswax. Sealed honey keeps indefinitely so long as its water content stays below about 18 percent.

Smoke the bees and pull frames

A beekeeper calms the bees with a smoker, which triggers a feeding instinct and masks the pheromones they use to communicate. Frames of capped comb are lifted out of the hive.

Spin the honey out

Wax caps are sliced off, and the frames are spun in a drum-shaped extractor so centrifugal force flings the honey out without destroying the comb. The empty frames go back to the bees.

Strain and jar it

The honey is strained to take out wax bits and may be warmed gently during bottling to delay crystallizing. Heating to 40 to 49 °C can slow granulation, though overheating destroys enzymes.