Which Bee is the Real Queen of Honey? Surprise- it’s not the Queen Bee

As beekeepers are familiar with the care and keeping of bees as they work hard to make honey, many consumers often wonder: Which bee makes the most honey? Surprisingly, it isn’t Miss Queen Bee herself. She does however make a huge impact on the production of honey, even though she does not exactly make the sweet stuff. With an estimated 20,000 species of bee, only one variety is responsible for not only making honey, but keeping gardens fresh, flourishing, and green. This bee is known as, namely, the honey bee.

The Queen bee is the largest bee in a single colony, and when blossomed into an adult, she becomes the mating bee that lays eggs, and can lay up to 2,000 in a single day. Queen bees weigh 20 millimeters in size, and can live from 2-5 years. They also have smooth stingers, unlike the worker bees’ barbed one. These smooth stingers on the Queen bee allow her to sting several times and still survive afterwards. The Queen bee’s offspring is called worker bees. They inhabit the colony or hive, and buzz around their habitat to make raw honey.

Apis Melifera, or the honey bee, are the main makers of honey. In fact, they are known for making all of the honey that gets produced daily. There is currently no other known species of bee that makes honey, except for the honey bee. They are also known as the worker bee, or the female honey bee. Female honey bees lack the reproductive capacity of the larger Queen bee, so they carry out 90% of tasks that enable the hive to function. 

First, there is nectar. This nectar that gets turned into honey is passed to each worker bee through their mouths, and digest the nectar for 30 minutes while turning it into a substance. Sounds gross, doesn’t it? That’s the weird but wonderful world of nature, for you. Then, the recently formed substance known as Invertase is converted into glucose and fructose. 

Afterwards in the process, the bees pass along the substance until its moisture is reduced from 70% to 20%, making the thing we all know and love- delicious and nutritious raw honey. Lastly, because I love presentation when it comes to food and beverage, tiny drops of honey are deposited into the hexagon honeycomb cells. 

While the honey bees are hard at work making the honey, the Queen bee’s role in starting the process through reproduction cannot be denied. She is, the largest in the hive and gives life to the worker bees who make honey. At Beezy Beez, the Queen Bee leads the way for the worker honey bees to do their best work. With thousands of bee species in the world, the honey bees’ talent often goes the most recognized. While other bees have their purpose, such as carpenter bees and leaf cutter bees pollinating blueberries and sunflowers, the worker bee works hard- and best- and making honey. 

Beezy Beez Honey is available to purchase in person or in our online store. To buy New York Raw Honey please go to http://www.newyorkrawhoney.com/ to view sizes of our Original Beezy Beez Honey, as well as Hott Honey.