🐝🍯 and discuss...

[AsAProfessionalFekko]

I thought it was getting quite educational - crumpets, bees, toast, hornets, newts...

As payback for opening the thread and seeing that illustration, have this horrifying creature. The scars from being stung look like bullet wounds.

So just exactly how do bees male honey? Is it their vomit or poo?

Never thought I'd find myself saying this, but please let it be vomit!

Still can't stomach the idea of that coffee that's partially digested and then excreted by civet? cats. People rave about it but nope, sorry, not happening.

That coffee is also appallingly cruel angry - it's produced on an industrial scale and the civets are caged. I would never ever buy it.

Not surprised, can't see any non-cruel way that they'd be able to do it. I'd never buy it either.

Special bee vomit (from Wikipedia)

Leaving the hive, foraging bees collect sugar-rich flower nectar and return to the hive where they use their "honey stomachs" to ingest and regurgitate the nectar repeatedly until it is partially digested.[13][15][17] Bee digestive enzymes – invertase, amylase, and diastase – along with gastric acid hydrolyze sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose.[13][15] The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion for as long as 20 minutes until the product reaches storage quality.[15] It is then placed in honeycomb cells left unsealed while still high in water content (about 20%)[citation needed] and natural yeasts, which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment.[14] The process continues as hive bees flutter their wings constantly to circulate air and evaporate water from the honey to a content around 18%, raising the sugar concentration, and preventing fermentation.[14][15] The bees then cap the cells with wax to seal them.[15]

Makes me wonder whether an artificial honey could be produced rather than collect it from bees. Seems like it ought to be possible.

I have a 'honey stomach'. Actually its more like a 'cheese and chocolate' belly.