What bees eat

Our beloved bees, hardworking and tireless insects, play an immense role for our planet by keeping pollination processes active and guaranteeing us humans about a third of the world's food. Much of the food we have available every day depends in large percentages on the work of these wonderful beings.

What about them? What do bees eat ? Let's find out together!

Nectar and Pollen: the food source for bees

bees constantly need nourishment to efficiently cover their daily energy needs. Their body is constantly in motion and the bees stop their work for a very short time during a day. In the past, it was believed that bees never slept. In reality this is not the case but their "sleep" really lasts for a few moments up to a maximum of a few minutes.

But because bees stay strong and healthy, proper food intake comes first. It is no coincidence that the weakening of bees starts from the scarcity of food available due to environmentally harmful substances used in agriculture that create an increasingly less hospitable environment for the life of bees . climate changes also cause changes in the flowering schedule of some plants useful for bees and this jeopardizes their survival.

Specifically, nectar and pollen represent the “fresh” food that bees collect from flowers and plants. However, they also feed on honey , a substance processed inside the hive . We can therefore say that pollen and nectar are more direct food to be consumed in part at the moment, while honey is more a sort of food supply elaborated in such a way that the nectar is preserved at best without produce mold.

Honey production and nutrition

Honey is the exclusive nourishment of bees for long periods. The accumulation of this substance allows them to have a constant source of food and guarantees the survival of the swarm in the colder seasons in which the search for food is more difficult. It is in fact necessary to specify an important detail. Beekeepers also draw on the honey produced by bees to have a return after so much work, but they take a moderate amount from the combs and leave the rest to the bees in order to ensure that they feed and survive without problems. The work of beekeepers is very intense and especially in this period of weakening of bees, protecting them as much as possible is very important.

Many plants are growing in a very limited way and when bees do not find enough nectar, beekeepers help them to survive through sugary solutions prepared by man in place of honey that allows bees to at least get back on track in the most difficult times.

How honey is made

The production of honey certainly starts from the collection of the primary source of production, that is the nectar of the flowers. This task is up to the foraging bees who, following the work of those explorers, learn about the place where the food source is present and go there together to collect it.

Foraging bees, thanks to a specific apparatus and special bags, are able to collect good quantities of nectar and pollen. At the basis of their nutrition we therefore find substances such as sucrose , glucose , fructose and other carbohydrates.

Nectar and pollen, once introduced into the hive, are transformed into honey by enzymes that the bees themselves produce. The nectar is very rich in water and to be stored in the form of honey is heated so that the water inside it evaporates completely. This happens through a careful ventilation process that the bees use through the movement of their wings.

Honey is a highly sought after substance due to its countless nutritional properties. In fact, we human beings are not the only ones to feed on it but other animals are also greedy for it. It is no coincidence that attacks by bears who love to feed on honey are not rare.

Queen bees and Royal Jelly

In addition to honey, bees also produce other substances including the very important Royal Jelly . It is a valuable food with which bees feed the larvae for the first days of life. From the third day on, however, the baby food is reserved only for the larvae found in the royal cells selected to become queen bees . In this way, the larvae that receive this nourishment will grow differently, developing a reproductive system different from that of other bees and used to produce thousands of eggs per day.

The ability to play this role is in fact reserved only for queens who develop these skills thanks to the royal jelly they eat. In fact, other bees, such as workers, do not have the ability to lay eggs because their apparatus develops in a completely different way from that of queens.

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