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Nectar collected from a flower and thickened into honey On the left a flower on a stem with six rounded petals around a dark centre. A striped bee with two wings hovers just above it, reaching its long tongue down into the middle for nectar. A dashed flight path runs from the bee across to the right, where a wall of six-sided honeycomb cells is stacked together. Some cells are empty, some are filled solid with honey, and two have been sealed over with a round wax lid.

The Sweet Secret of Honey

About 3 minutes

Have you ever wondered how bees make that golden honey we love? It does not start as honey. It starts as a thin, watery liquid inside a flower, and it takes a whole hive of bees to turn it into the thick stuff in the jar.

From flower to jar

Step through what happens, one stage at a time.

  1. A bee flies from flower to flower looking for nectar, a sweet liquid the flowers make.
  2. She sips the nectar up through her long tongue, called a proboscis, and stores it in a special pouch inside her body — the honey stomach.
  3. Back at the hive, she passes the nectar to another bee. That bee chews it and passes it on again, over and over. Each pass removes a little more water.
  4. The thickened nectar goes into a honeycomb cell, and the bees fan it with their wings to dry it out further. Now it is honey.
  5. The bees seal the cell with a lid of beeswax, and the honey keeps safely inside until it is needed.

Why all that passing around?

Nectar is mostly water, and honey is not. Almost everything the bees do — passing it bee to bee, chewing it, fanning it with their wings — is a way of getting the water out. That is what turns a thin liquid into something thick and sweet that will not spoil.

Why the wax lid matters

Once the honey is thick enough, the bees cap the cell with beeswax. The lid keeps the honey clean and safe inside until it is needed.

Why the cells are that shape

Fill a comb with cells and watch what each shape costs. Round cells of the same size leave a hole between every three of them, and the wasted space is drawn as real holes rather than described. Then you are given a fixed amount of wax and three shapes of exactly equal area, and only one of them lets you build all twelve cells. Last, pack the comb with round cells and squeeze: rows lined up give you four-sided cells, rows staggered give you six-sided ones, from the same press. Nobody chose a hexagon. It is the shape a circle turns into when its neighbours push back.

Next time you taste honey, remember the journey: a lot of flowers, a lot of bees, and a great deal of fanning.