Honey Bee Hive

The honey bee is primarily known for its production as well as storage of honey. The honey bee hive is a perennial structure which is made out of wax and serves as the nest for a colony of honey bees. Honey beekeeping is a lucrative income generating option wherein the bee keeper is trained how to prepare wooden hives and how to handle the bees and extraction of honey. Bees and honey are synonymous especially honeybees as collecting honey is their primary function and hence they are cultivated only for honey and honey products. Honey bees are most active in the summer and are known to hibernate during the winter. Honey bees tend to live on the honey that they have stored in the winter. A typical colony of honey bees will have three types of members namely, drones, workers and the queen. Each type of member has its own special quality and function in the colony. The queen reigns supreme in the nest and is always surrounded by attendants who serve her rich food required for the various tasks that she performs. The queen bee tends to produce some very powerful pheromones which are chemical signals to the worker bees.

These signals control the behavior of the workers bees and acts as social glue for the bees living in that particular colony. Honey is typically a thick and sugary solution that is prepared by these honey bees. Honey is mainly composed of fructose, water, oil, glucose and other special enzymes that are produced by the bees. The first step towards the production of honey involves the bees collecting nectar from flowering plants which is then stored in their honey sacs. This honey is then carried back to the hive where it is regurgitated into the mouths of the various house bees. These house bees in turn add certain enzymes from their body to this nectar which causes the water to evaporate and leave behind honey which is then stored in the cells of the honeycomb. Honey is known to be one of the easiest foods to digest and is also known to promote digestion. The color and flavor of the honey varies depending on the flowering plant from which the nectar is collected. The honey bee hive is an intricate structure that is kept warm at a temperature of 30- 3 degrees C even during the winter by the bees.