How Honey Produced ?

Plants make sugar for their nutrition. The sugars present in their small molecules are distributed to their various flower parts for use. When the flower is fully grown and ready to fertilize other flowers too, the need for this nutritious food increases for growth and nutrition. The plant manages this in advance and in this way the flow of flowers and sugar increases at the time of blooming. It increases so much that it becomes harmful to flowers, flower parts, and seeds. The flower expels excess sugar from the sap-secreting glands located at its base. This juice, which is collected in the form of sweet juice in the cup of flower petals, is no longer useful to the plant, but nature completes the conception of the plant world through it.

         For the formation of seeds, it is necessary that the pollen of the male flower reach the female flower. The attractive color of the flower, its attractive fragrance spreading far in the air and the sweet nectar present in it attract insects, among which bees are very important. Because both flower nectar and pollen are its food. While searching for food, flies sit on flowers and suck this sweet juice with their tongue. This juice is the same juice that we call Honey. There is a difference between the honey collected by bees in the hive and the floral juice produced by flowers. The nectar of flowers does not have any of the qualities of ripe honey before it is collected by bees. Ripe honey has less water content whereas flower juice has more sugar and water content. The sugar present in honey is not like sugarcane sugar. The taste of honey changes when the oil and aromatic substances of flower juice are ripe.

        The sweet nectar of the flower is commonly mistaken for honey. In childhood, if you have sucked even a drop of nectar from a white-flowered Palash out of curiosity while playing, then you can know how much difference there is between that small drop of nectar and the honey of a beehive. It is true that both substances have sweetness due to the presence of sugar in them. But flower nectar is a thin liquid and honey is a thick liquid. And Honey do not smell and taste like parent flower.

The honey kept in the chambers has a slight trace of the smell of its parent flower and to some extent the taste of the honey also depends on its parent flower. The smell and taste of honey varies according to the season in which it is collected. But its chemical composition always remains the same.  The process of making honey starts when the bee extracts the juice from the flower cup. The difference between raw flower juice and prepared honey can be seen, some inside the bee’s body and some outside. The bee extracts the juice from the flowers with its tongue and after passing through its alimentary system, it reaches the digestive system or first stomach in the form of a honey sac.

When this fluid enters the honey sac, the juice secreting glands located below the tongue react with the acidic substances. Some portion of water found in the secretion gets separated from the honey in the honey sac and undergoes chemical changes. On returning to the hive, the bees remove from their mouth the secretions from some of the glands on their heads and keep them in their chambers. The honey is not yet fully ripe and has not reached its final density. Even after being kept in the hive, some changes take place in it. The bees thicken it and then the nectar which is immature honey turns into mature honey.

When the bees reach the hive, they give their burden to one of the bees living in the chambers. That bee makes some changes in the honey and keeps it in the cells. The effect of giving it to each other in this way is that honey gets more acidic properties, like liquor, Asava or arishtha is made. Honey is kept in the hive in the same way; it is kept at a temperature of about 20 to 25 degrees. And then its excess water evaporates. In this way the flower’s raw juice gets converted into honey and is reduced to almost less than half of its natural weight.