As a field guide at Londolozi, I have the pleasure of welcoming and guiding visitors from around the globe through the beauty of the African bushveld. Many of these guests are deeply curious, often asking fascinating questions about the natural world. Recently, I was asked a question that did not have a straightforward answer:

“How do bees produce honey?”

Surprisingly, the process is quite intricate, combining biology, communication, and engineering in a way that highlights the ingenuity of honeybees. Let’s explore how these tiny creatures create one of nature’s sweetest treasures.

The Hive Structure

A honeybee colony operates within a highly organized caste system, ensuring efficiency and survival. There are three types of bees in the hive. Each plays a fundamental role in the hive’s function, with honey being a primary byproduct of their collective efforts.

Inside the hive, teamwork is everything! The Queen, the Drones, and the Worker bees each play a vital role in the intricate life cycle of a honeybee colony. 

The Queen is the sole reproductive female, capable of laying up to 2,000 eggs per day while releasing pheromones that regulate hive behaviour. Remarkably, she can live between 2 to 5 years, developing from a larva that has been exclusively fed royal jelly.

The Worker Bees, all female, perform various essential tasks that change as they age. They live for about six weeks in summer or up to six months in winter. Equipped with barbed stingers, they can sting only once before dying.

• Scouts: These bees scout out new foraging locations.
• Guards: They protect the hive from intruders.
• Nursery nurses: They care for the queen and brood (larvae).
• Honey producers and Foragers: They collect nectar, pollen and water to produce honey.
• Builder bees construct the honeycomb.
• Cleaners: They maintain the hive’s cleanliness. 

• The Drones are male bees whose sole purpose is to mate with a queen. Those that do mate die shortly afterwards, while others are expelled from the hive before winter when they are no longer needed.

The Honey-Making Process

Bees produce honey as a vital food source for the colony. However, before honey production can begin, they must first locate nectar-rich flowers—a process that relies on an extraordinary form of communication known as the waggle dance.

The waggle dance is a sophisticated method used by foraging bees to inform others about the location of food sources. The dance follows a figure-eight pattern:

• The angle of the waggle relative to gravity indicates the direction of the food source in relation to the sun.
• The length and intensity of the waggle phase convey the distance, with longer waggles indicating a farther food source.
• If the food is within 50 meters, a simpler round dance is performed instead.

Once a forager bee locates nectar, it collects it using a long, tube-like tongue and stores it in a special stomach called the crop, where enzymes like invertase begin breaking down complex sugars (sucrose) into simpler ones (glucose and fructose). Meanwhile, the foragers make full use of seasonal flowering plants, such as aloes, gathering as much pollen as possible. Pollen is used as a food source by the bees, particularly for their young, but it is NOT used in the production of honey.

Back at the hive, the foragers transfer the partially processed nectar to the honey producers, which further break it down by repeatedly passing it mouth-to-mouth. This enzymatic activity continues until the nectar reaches the optimal composition. The bees then deposit it into hexagonal honeycomb cells.

To complete the transformation into honey, worker bees fan their wings over the honeycomb, evaporating water until the moisture content drops below 18%. This thickens the nectar and prevents fermentation. Once the honey is ready, the bees cap the cells with wax to preserve it for long-term storage.

The Marvel of Honeycomb

The honeycomb is an architectural wonder, built with precision by tireless worker bees. Worker bees have wax glands that produce tiny wax flakes. They chew these flakes to soften them, and then vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat, making the wax malleable. Bees then mould the softened wax into cylinders, which connect together, forming straight lines that eventually create the hexagonal structure of the honeycomb- an incredibly efficient design that maximizes storage while using minimal wax. 

Beyond storing honey, the honeycomb serves as a cradle for the next generation of bees.

But it’s not only bees that appreciate this golden treasure; in the African bush, creatures such as the Greater Honeyguide and the Honey Badger are drawn to honey and wax alike.

The honeyguide, in particular, has an extraordinary relationship with humans and mammals, often leading them to hives in the hope of feasting on the wax left behind.

A human carefully removes the raw honeycomb in order to access the sweet honey beneath the wax.

The process of honey production is a brilliant example of nature’s interconnected design, where cooperation, communication, and precision come together to sustain not only the hive but a host of other species in the ecosystem.