How do bees make honey?

Picture Credit: Kenneth Lehtinen

Question: “How do bees make honey?” – from a 5 year old in British Columbia 

Answer: For an in-depth look at how honey bees make honey, we turned to the great resources of Buzz About Bees, the Ontario Bee Keepers Association and the Canadian Honey Council.

As many of you know, bees play an exceptionally important role in the on-going health of our everyday food production. According to the Canadian Honey Council “honey bees pollinate about a third of Canadian food crops and also contribute substantially to Canada’s agricultural sector as producers of honey and other hive products such as beeswax and bee pollen”. In addition to their ability to produce honey, bees are essential for the production of many fruits and vegetables. The Canadian Honey Council explains that “without honey bee pollination, we would have very few blueberries, apples, raspberries, cranberries, tomatoes, peppers, kiwis, pumpkins, squashes, strawberries, almonds and blackberries.”

In Canada alone, more than 500,000 (that’s a lot!) honey bee colonies, each with over 60,000 bees, are tended by almost 6,000 bee keepers: there are about 30 billion honey bees in Canada – that’s almost 1,000 honey bees per Canadian!

The team at Buzz About Bees explains the how bees make honey.

“Honey production starts with foraging worker bees – and flowers, of course. As the weather begins to warm up, the bees will begin collecting nectar from flowers within a radius of around 4 miles. The male honey bees (drones), do not forage for the hive, and nor does the queen honey bee. The bees have glands which secrete an enzyme. When the bees collect the nectar, it is then mixed with the enzyme in the bee’s mouth. The nectar is then taken back to the bee hive or nest, where it is dropped into the honeycomb. These are hexagonal shaped cells, which in the wild, the bees make themselves out of wax. Once the nectar solution has become more concentrated, at this point, the bees will cap the cells. This is when beekeepers know the honey is ready to be harvested!”

For a great resource that further explains the process of how bees make honey, see the amazing video by a very talented artist Ashley v. Feeney below.

For those of you interested in learning more about bees, beekeeping or other honey related matters, click on the great resources below.

Canadian Honey Council – http://www.honeycouncil.ca/index.php

Buzz About Bees – http://www.buzzaboutbees.net/

Ontario Bee Keepers Association – http://www.ontariobee.com/

How is maple syrup made?

Question: “How is maple syrup made?” – from a 4 year old in Ontario

Answer: Given that Canada is known worldwide for its incredible maple syrup product (Canada produces 71% of the world’s maple syrup supply), we turned to the experts at Pure Canadian Maple Syrup to help us answer this great question.

Phase I – Mother Nature at Work

The maple syrup production process gets its start from none other than Mother Nature herself in the months of February to April.  When the nights are still cold, water from the soil is absorbed into the maple tree. During the day, the warmer temperature creates pressure that pushes the water back down to the bottom of the tree and causing naturally occurring maple sap to flow.

Phase II – Gathering the Sap

In order to gather the precious sap produced by the maple trees, the trees are “tapped”. This means little spouts are tapped into the tree and a bucket hung from each tap. The sap pours out of the tap (or spout) into a bucket, or travels through many lines of clear tubing to a central sap repository. The sap is gathered over 12 to 20 days, usually between early March and late April, according to the region. Each maple harvest season, the sugar trees are tapped in a slightly different area than the previous year, preserving the health and enforcing the sustainable growth of the trees. Sap tapped at the beginning of the harvest season is generally clearer and lighter in taste. As the season advances, maple syrup becomes darker and more caramelized in flavor. Maple syrup is categorized and graded (Grade A, Grade B) according to color, clarity, density and strength of maple flavor.

Phase III – Boiling Sap to Make Syrup

After harvesting in the maple woods, the sap is transported to a sugar house where it boils down to become real maple syrup. During cooking, storage tank pipes feed sap to a long and narrow ridged pan called an evaporator. As it boils, water evaporates and becomes denser and sweeter. Sap boils until it reaches the density of maple syrup. After evaporation, the finished products get bottled or canned, and are shipped to their final destinations.

For more fun facts about maple syrup including great recipes, visit the Pure Canadian Maple Syrup site at the link below. 

http://www.purecanadamaple.com/