Honey and bees - an amazing combination
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The taste of honey is vibrant and rich in the flavors of the plants foraged, and honeybees are expert scientists when it comes to making this delicious superfood from the nectar of the plants. When bees forage, some pick up pollen while others pick up nectar from the plants being visited. The bees foraging for nectar store it in their honey crop (stomach). This begins the process of adding enzymes to the nectar to break it down from a complex to simple sugar. This chemical change, called hydrolysis, is why honey is much easier to digest than regular table sugar. The bees must not only change the chemical structure of the nectar, but they must dehydrate or remove water from the nectar. The house bees do this by regurgitating and re-drinking the nectar for approximately 20 minutes. This adds additional enzymes, which continue to change the chemical structure of the nectar and reduce the water content from 80% to 20%. At 20%, the nectar is deposited into the honeycomb, and the house bees begin to fan over the open nectar to reduce the water content to 17%, at which time the nectar is capped with wax and stored in the comb. Thus, the superfood called honey is created through the addition of enzymes and the process of evaporation. Sound complicated? Maybe, but all we need to know is that honeybees make a delicious natural superfood for us to enjoy, so the next time you see a bee foraging on a flower, stop and give thanks!