Lesson 10: What Bees Bring Home

Nectar (and how it becomes honey), pollen, water and propolis

Foragers, the oldest workers, bring home four things: nectar, pollen, water and propolis. Each has its own job in the colony. Knowing what they're for helps you judge whether a colony has enough food, and explains a lot of what you'll see on the frames.

1. Nectar, and how bees turn it into honey

Nectar is a sweet liquid made by flowers, almost entirely sugar and water. Plants make it to attract bees. While a bee drinks nectar she picks up pollen on her hairy body and carries it to the next flower, pollinating it. You could say nectar is the flower's payment for that service.

How much nectar a flower makes depends on the type of plant, the weather, the time of day and recent rainfall.

From flower to honey, step by step:

1. Collecting. A forager sucks up nectar with her long tongue (proboscis) and stores it in her honey stomach, a holding tank in front of her real stomach. Nothing in the honey stomach is digested.
2. Handing over. Back at the hive she passes the nectar mouth to mouth to house bees.
3. Adding enzymes. A house bee works the nectar in her mouth for about 20 minutes, mixing in enzymes (natural chemicals from the bee). This turns it into unripe honey.
4. Drying. She puts the unripe honey in a cell. Extra water evaporates, and bees fan their wings to speed this up. How long it takes depends on the nectar, the temperature and the humidity.
5. Capping. When the honey is ripe, about 18 percent water (less than one-fifth), the bees seal the cell with a thin wax capping. Capped honey is ripe honey, and the capping keeps it fresh until the bees, or the beekeeper, need it.

Honey is the colony's energy (carbohydrate) food, especially for getting through winter. Its main sugars are fructose and glucose. Honey color and flavor vary a lot depending on which flowers the nectar came from. Lesson 70 covers how to tell when honey is ready to harvest.

2. Pollen

Pollen is the colony's protein food, and it's also rich in fat. Nurse bees eat it to make the brood food that feeds larvae (lessons 7 and 8), so a colony can't raise brood without pollen.

• Foragers pack pollen into little pellets and carry them home in the pollen baskets on their hind legs.
• Pollen comes in many colors (yellow, orange, gray, even red or purple), depending on the flower it came from. Watching the colors coming in at the entrance tells you what the bees are working.
• In the hive, bees pack pollen into cells about three-quarters full, next to the brood (lesson 9). Stored pollen is sometimes called bee bread.

3. Water

Bees collect water and use it to cool the hive in hot weather. They spread it in the hive and fan it so it evaporates, like a swamp cooler. Water also matters when the colony is using stored honey and raising brood. That's why a colony needs a reliable water source close by (lessons 3 and 51).

4. Propolis

Propolis (bee glue) is a sticky, brown resin that foragers collect from tree buds, pine sap and other gummy plant materials. Bees use it like varnish and cement: to seal cracks, fill uneven surfaces, glue parts of the hive together, strengthen comb and sometimes narrow the entrance. Lesson 76 covers pollen and propolis as hive products.

How it looks: A forager collecting nectar (USDA).

Stored pollen: the different colors come from different flowers.

Pollinating an apple blossom while collecting nectar and pollen (USDA).

What to remember

• Nectar → honey: collected in the honey stomach → passed to house bees → enzymes added → water evaporated (bees fan) → capped when ripe (about 18% water).
• Honey = energy (carbohydrate); pollen = protein and fat. No pollen, no brood.
• Water cools the hive; propolis seals and glues it.

Quick check

1. What's the difference between the honey stomach and the bee's real stomach?
2. How do you know honey in a cell is ripe?
3. Why can't a colony raise brood without pollen?

Adapted from: Purdue Extension, 4-H Beekeeping Division I: Understanding the Honey Bee (4-H-571-W), "Honey and Honey Plants" and "Beeswax and Honeycomb", and Learning About Beekeeping (4-H-1057-W); UGA Bee Program, Getting Started: Honey Bee Management; UF/IFAS Extension, Honey and Its Uses (ENY102/AA154) and European Honey Bee (EENY568/IN1005); Delaplane, K. S., Honey Bees and Beekeeping (UGA Extension Bulletin 1045, rev. 2017).

Photos: forager on zinnia, Peggy Greb, USDA ARS · bee on apple blossom, Steve Ausmus, USDA ARS (public domain) · pollen in comb, Waugsberg, CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Adapted from university Extension sources. Experienced Georgia beekeepers are reviewing these lessons. See something that doesn't match your experience? Tell us.