Honeybees work together in amazing ways to make the sweet honey we enjoy on our toast and in our tea. First, worker bees fly from flower to flower collecting nectar, which is a sugary liquid found deep inside flowers. They use their long tongues to suck up the nectar and store it in a special stomach called a honey stomach. A single bee might visit up to 100 flowers on just one trip!
Back at the hive, the bees pass the nectar to other bees who chew it for about 30 minutes. While chewing, they add special chemicals called enzymes from their bodies that begin to change the nectar into honey. Then they spread the nectar into six-sided cells in the honeycomb.
The bees fan their wings really fast to help water evaporate from the nectar, making it thicker and thicker. It can take the nectar from two million flowers to make just one pound of honey! When the honey is thick enough and ready, the bees cover the cell with a wax cap to seal it and store it as food for the winter months when flowers aren't blooming.