bee poop? come on…
When a honey bee takes nectar from a flower, she stores it in a “honey sack” (an organ akin to a stomache). When this honey sack is full, she returns to the hive, deposits the drop of nectar into the honeycomb, and evaporates the water out of the nectar by fanning her wings. Once the honey has aged, wax is used to seal it in the comb, which keeps it clean and safe.
fun facts
* A honeybee makes 154 trips for one teaspoon of honey.
* A colony produces 60 to 100 pounds of honey a year.
* To gather a pound of honey, a bee flies a distance equal to more than three times around the world. It takes two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
* A honeybee will fly five miles in search of nectar
so it’s not bee poop. a more accurate description is bee vomit, but even that is not quite accurate.
while i’m on the board i might as well mention how honey is extracted from the comb (it’s bound to come up sooner or later).
if you’ve never seen a beehive, it’s basically a tower of stacked boxes. inside each box are nine frames that hang in there like files in a filing cabinet. on these frames is the honey comb. now each cell in the comb is sealed with wax. to open the cells, one takes an electrically heated knife and slices off the caps(think of it like skinning or filleting). then, one places the frame in a centrifuge and spins it. the honey flies out of the comb, hits the side of the centriguge, and collects at the bottom. after such and such amount of time, you drain the honey off into whatever container you want. i usually drain it into a bucket, let it sit overnite or so to allow anything like wax and stuff to float to the surface where i can skim it off (much easier than straining the honey). the buckets i use has a nozzle at the bottom that i use to fill up jars, honey bears, etc with honey. A colony produces 60 to 100 pounds of honey a year. one leaves a certain portion of that for the bees to live off during the winter (amount depends on climate)