Adventist Adventurer Awards and Answers/Honey

Where does honey come from?


It comes from the hard work of bees, foraging bees suck nectar from flowers, swallow it and store it in a honey crop, a special type of stomach which comes before the actual digestive system stomach. This nectar does not enter the bee's digestive system. As the bees swallow the nectar they add enzymes from glands opening into the mouth.

How does the bee make honey?
When the forager bee returns to the hive she (they are all female) regurgitates the nectar and passes it to one of the hive bees who adds more enzymes. The nectar may be passed from bee to bee in this way several times before it is finally deposited into a cell on the honeycomb. The enzymes added by the bees are important in converting the nectar into honey. They break down the complex sugars in the nectar into simple sugars—for example, sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose. They also produce compounds which give honey its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. When the nectar is first stored it contains up to 90 percent water. With this amount of water it wouldn't store for long without fermenting, so the bees fan the cells with their wings. This air movement, together with the heat in the hive, evaporates the water. When the water content is down to about 16 percent the bees consider the honey ready and seal the cells with caps of wax.

Understand the terms: super, extractor, nectar, pollen.
Super Place where honey is stored

A honey extractor is a mechanical device used in the honey extraction. A honey extractor extracts the honey from the honey comb without destroying the comb. Extractors work by centrifugal force. A drum or container holds a frame basket which spins, flinging the honey out. With this method the wax comb stays intact within the frame and can be reused by the bees.

Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds and bats. Nectar is the sugar source for honey. Nectar secretion increases as the flower is visited by pollinators. After pollination, the nectar is frequently reabsorbed into the plant

Pollen is a fine powder produced by certain plants when they reproduce. During the spring, summer, and fall seasons, it's released into the air and picked up by the wind, which brings it to other plants to fertilize them.

What is the role of the beekeeper?
A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees. Honey bees produce commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen, and royal jelly. Beekeepers also use honeybees to provide pollination services to fruit and vegetable growers; raise queens and bees to sell to other farmers, and to satisfy scientific curiosity. Many people keep bees as a hobby. Others do it for income, either as a sideline to other work, or as a commercial operator—depending mostly on the number of colonies they maintain.

Make two crafts from the following list

 * Bee hive - Shape Book
 * Honey comb - Egg Carton Honeycomb
 * Bee - Bee Candy Plate and Foam Bee Pin
 * Flower -Chenille Flowers
 * Your choice - Bee Lapbook

Taste three flavors (types) of honey. Discover which you like best. Why?
Honey is classified by its floral source. There are also regional honeys. Honey is also graded on its color and optical density by USDA standards, graded on a scale called the Pfund scale, which ranges from 0 for "water white" honey to more than 114 for "dark amber" honey.

Floral source Generally, honey is classified by the floral source of the nectar from which it was made. Honeys can be from specific types of flower nectars or can be blended after collection. The pollen in honey is traceable to floral source and therefor region of origin.

Blended Most commercially available honey is blended, meaning it is a mixture of two or more honeys differing in floral source, color, flavor, density or geographic origin.

Polyfloral Polyfloral honey, also known as wildflower honey, is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers. The taste may vary from year to year, and the aroma and the flavor can be more or less intense, depending on which bloomings are prevalent.

Monofloral Monofloral honey is made primarily from the nectar of one type of flower. Different monofloral honeys have a distinctive flavor and color because of differences between their principal nectar sources. To produce monofloral honey, beekeepers keep beehives in an area where the bees have access to only one type of flower.

Honeydew honey Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant sap-sucking insects. Honeydew honey is very dark brown in color, with a rich fragrance of stewed fruit or fig jam, and is not as sweet as nectar honeys.

External Resources
Honey - U.S. Honey Board

Bee Lapbook and Crafts = Danielle's Place

NIV Bible - Bible Gate Way

Adventurer Manual - KFW Adventurers