How do bees collect nectar?
It’s something that no one knows that bees can collect nectar. Especially in the spring when the flowers are in full bloom, bees are often seen busy in the flowers. If you observe carefully, you will find that the bees gather on this flower for a while, and then fly to another flower. After a few turns, it seems that the work of collecting nectar seems to be very simple, but in fact it is extremely difficult for bees to collect nectar!
1. Detect nectar sources
The swarm of bees out of the nest to collect honey is not aimlessly flying, but will send a large number of scout bees to find the source of nectar. These scout bees are experienced elderly bees. The bees fly while searching for the source of nectar, so they fly. The route is tortuous. After finding the source of nectar, the bee pickers gather some nectar and pollen to bring back to the hive.
2. Notify the swarm
The scout bees will pass the nectar and pollen to the other worker bees when they bring them back to the nest. At the same time, the scout bees will use dances to indicate the location and distance of the nectar source. The most famous ones are the round dance and the wagging tail dance. The round dance roughly means the source of nectar. It is very close to the honeycomb, and the fewer the number of turns in the wagging dance per unit time, the farther the nectar source is.
3. Worker bees gather honey
Worker bees will go out of the nest to collect a large amount of information after receiving the information from the detective bees. The tool for collecting nectar is the tubular mouthparts. Through the mouthparts, the worker bees can suck the nectar into the honey sac for temporary storage, and the tools for collecting pollen are mainly appendages. It turns into a pollen basket and a pollen comb. The pollen comb is used to brush the lower body with pollen, and the pollen basket is mainly used to hold pollen.
4. transport honey back to the nest
After the worker bees gather back to the nest, they will give the nectar and pollen to the housekeeping bees. The housekeeping bees are generally 1 to 18 days old. They are responsible for feeding the young bees with the pollen and honey. If the collected nectar cannot be consumed, they will The honey will be brewed into the honeycomb and stored in the spleen. After the honey is fully brewed and matured, it will be sealed with beeswax.
Summary: Honey bees collecting honey is definitely not a simple matter. Assuming that the average distance between the honey source and the hive is 1.5 kilometers, then the bees will have to fly 450,000 kilometers to produce 1 kg of honey. You have to know that the circumference of the earth’s equator is only 40,000 kilometers. That is to say, the distance that bees travel for every kilogram of honey brewed is almost equal to 11 times around the earth.
