The Art of Honey Making

It was a fine morning in the mid of fall, I woke up to the buzzing sound outside my wall, these getting louder every day. Before I start, let me introduce myself, I'm Gia, a worker bee of my family, we are an average family of 50000 members. I'm already late for work, all my sisters already left home to collect food, our queen was busy laying eggs as always, she is often tired these days, there were days she laid more 1500-1600 eggs a day, those were the golden times of our family.

 

     Winter is coming, queen already ordered to start sealing walls to fight cold. There is a lot more work to be done before the cold days, not even  half of cells are full and this time there is more mouth to feed, look like our queen has done a fine job. I cleaned my cell,had enough food,all set to go to work, I started working when I was 2 weeks old. Sometimes I wish I was  born as drone (male bee), they do nothing all day and eat our share of food, all they do is mate with the queen. Winter is not that long, soon they all will be left in cold to starve and die, that was a relief. I started my day with all these weird thoughts, these days I have to travel miles to collect enough food, someday it goes more than 5 miles. I like it in spring, there are flowers everywhere, I like orange blossoms more, it is hard to find flowers in fall.

 

      Oh,.look like I found one, I stick my proboscis(tube like tough of bees) deep into flowers heart and suck the nectar juice into my stomach, where it mixes with my enzymes and proteins, it takes about 20-30 mins before it becomes world's sweetest food u call honey. Before I leave I grabbed some pollen from the anther of flower, those are for young ones (Larva), they like it more. I flew from flower to flower until my nectar sac is full, thanks to my wings I can carry food as heavy as my weight, that makes the job easier. It is time to get back home. 

 

     It was a long way back home, all my fellow bees were busy with their work, some were filling wax comb, some were feeding young ones, some were fixing the comb walls, we work hard and never rest much. I moved to one end of the hive and delivered honey to one of the indoor bees, honey will pass from mouth to mouth until it dry enough to store in comb cell. the temperature(32.5 C) inside the cell and fanning of bees are enough to evaporate water to store honey for long winter. once the comb is full we cap it with wax and move to next empty comb. 

 

     There is a lot more happening in my home than just food collection, I'll tell you all about it some other day, it is time for my next round, there is little time and so much work to do. Sometimes I think why we work so hard all day, actually, we only consume 20% of the food we collect, then I realized we are as organized and socialized as human but we are not selfish as you guys, now stop listening to me and do some work,....winter is coming.