How do bees make honey?

Have you ever spread golden honey on warm toast? That sweet treat began deep inside a flower. So how does a tiny bee turn a flower into honey?

A sip of sweet nectar

Flowers make a sugary juice called nectar. A bee lands on a flower and sips up the nectar with its long, straw-like tongue. It stores the nectar in a special pouch called its honey tummy — a tummy just for carrying flower juice, not for eating!

When her honey tummy is full, the bee buzzes all the way back home to the hive.

Passing it along

Back at the hive, the bee gives the nectar to another bee, mouth to mouth. That bee passes it to another, and another. Each time, the nectar gets mixed with bee spit that slowly changes it and makes it thicker.

Then the bees tuck the nectar into little six-sided wax cups called honeycomb.

Fanning it dry

Fresh nectar is too watery to be honey. So the bees flap their wings over the honeycomb like tiny fans! The moving air dries the nectar out until it turns thick, sticky and golden. Now it is honey, and the bees seal each cup with a wax lid to save it for winter.

Wonder fact: One little bee makes only about a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. It takes a whole busy hive to fill your honey jar!