The foragers are responsible for supplying the hive. Once placed on a flowering plant, the bee spreads the petals, sticks his head inside, extends her tongue and sucks the nectar stores it temporarily in its crop.
Because of their anatomy and in particular the length of their language, the bees can collect nectar on some flowers, which are then say bees. The nectar of flowers for attracting insect pollinators, which thus ensure their fertilization.
Bees can also harvest the honeydew excretion produced by sucking insects like aphids, scale insects or metcalfa from tree sap. It will be used in the same way as the flower nectar (this basic product which is especially used to develop the fir honey).
The development begins in the honey crop of workers during her flight back to the hive. Invertase, an enzyme family of diastase is added in the crop and nectar. It occurs when a chemical reaction, the hydrolysis of sucrose to give glucose and fructose.
Arrival in the hive, the bee bee regurgitates the nectar to a recipient (trophallaxis), which in turn regurgitate and re-ingest the nectar-rich water, mixing it with saliva and digestive juices, which effect of supplementing the digestion of sugars. Once stored in the cells, honey is dehydrated by a long and energetic breakdown by specifically working fans.
Mature, honey has an extremely long shelf life. The heat of the hive and worker bees fans, who can maintain a current of air for 20 minutes in the hive, causing the evaporation of water. Honey matures when its water content falls below 18% and is then stored in other cells that will be capped when full.
Honey is thus stored by the bees as stores of food, especially during unfavorable seasons, dry season for Apis dorsata or winter for Apis mellifera.
The scientist Heinrich measured the volume of work done by foraging bees. Thus, to produce 500 grams of honey, bees must make more than 17,000 trips, visiting 8.7 million flowers, all representing more than 7000 hours of work.