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2 years ago

Honey: You drink it in your tea and spread it on your bread, but what is honey, really?

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00:00 What is honey?

00:04 You drink it in your tea and spread it on your bread, but what is honey, really?

00:09 The sweet stuff is made from the nectar of flowering plants and stockpiled inside beehives

00:14 to eat during times of scarcity.

00:17 But how do industrious bees make this thick, golden liquid?

00:21 It starts when honeybees extract nectar, a sugary liquid, from flowers using their long,

00:27 tube-shaped tongues.

00:29 This nectar is then stored in the bee's extra stomach, or crop.

00:33 As it's sloshing around in there, the nectar mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical

00:38 composition and pH, making it more suitable for long-term storage.

00:44 When the bee returns to the hive, it passes the nectar to another bee by, well, regurgitating

00:49 it into that bee's mouth.

00:51 So in one sense, honey is, in part, bee vomit.

00:54 The bees repeat this process until the nectar is deposited into a honeycomb for safekeeping.

01:01 But at this point, the nectar is still a viscous liquid, nothing like the thick, sugary syrup

01:06 you use at home.

01:08 To get all that excess water out of the honey, the bees get to work again, fanning the honey

01:13 with their wings to speed up the evaporation process.

01:17 Once most of the water is gone, the bees seal the honey up in the honeycomb using a liquid

01:22 from their abdomen that eventually hardens into beeswax.

01:26 The beeswax protects the honey from air and water, so it can be stored safely throughout

01:30 the cold, scarce winter months.

01:33 How bees make honey, just another one of life's little mysteries.

01:37 (pencil writing)

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