A bee makes less than one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime. I find that amazing. I buy large jars of honey several times a year. What a thought–how many bees it takes to make 16 ounces of honey?

There is a biochemistry process in gettng that pollen into honey. Honey is about 80% sugar, 17% water and the rest are trace compounds that give the honey its color and flavor.

Here’s how it’s done:

First the bees drink the nectar, which gets mixed with enzymes in their stomach-like sacs. At the hive, the bees pass the material to house beens who remove some of the moisture content by ingesting and spitting it back up. I think that’s a bit gross…but I will continue. These house bees put the mixture into the honeycombs. The bees then fan their wings to further reduce the moisture and then put a wax cap over it. The enzymes produce many sugars and acids in the honey. The most important enzyme is invertase which splits the sucrose molecules into fructose and glucose.

Honey has a pH of 3.8 to 4.0, which puts it on an acidic scale. As a comparison, your stomach acids have a pH of 1, while water is typically around pH 7. The acids found in honey are formic, acetic, butyric and lactic. The trace compounds found in honey are potassium, iron, manganese, copper and silicon. There is also aobut 1% nitrogen from proteins. The flavors in honey are affected by the volatile organic compunds that are found in flowers.