Bees fly onto flowers, suck their nectar and store it in their honey stomach.  

These worker bees are called “foraging bees”.

In the honey stomach the nectar is already subject to a change causing it to turn into honey later on.

 

 

 

 

 

When the foraging bees return to the hive, they give the nectar to the worker bees in the hive. These worker bees put the nectar in the empty cells.  

The nectar then still contains 60% water, which is far too much to be able to preserve it.  The bees flap their wings so that a large flow of warm air originates in the hive and this will cause the nectar to dry out.  When a significant part of the water from the nectar has evaporated, the nectar has become honey.  

To preserve the honey each cell is closed with a layer of wax.

 

 

 

When the comb is full of filled cells on both sides, the beekeeper is able to harvest the honey.

He opens the hive and removes a full comb with cells filled with honey.  He uses a special knife to remove all wax seals so that the honey becomes visible again in the cells.

Then he places a few combs in a kind of spin drier (centrifuge) and lets it spin around. Due to the centrifugal force the liquid honey is spun out of the cells and caught in jars. This is called “spinning honey”.