

This is a viscous super food that has the unique characteristic of never spoiling.
#Nectar flower hive full
Listen to the full episode to learn more about native pollinators and hear from curious kid Kader Narayan, an eight-year-old who lives in Pennsylvania, about his efforts to teach people about pollinator gardens.Hint:Honey is made from the nectar of flowers.

Butterflies, hummingbirds, and bats also play important pollinator roles. Native bees are very important to our ecosystem and there are more than 4000 species in the US alone. Honeybees are far from the only pollinator. And it's got a muscle around it that keeps pumping So if you think a little bulb with a barbed point that keeps pumping into you, it's an amazing adaptation," Hayden explains. "And it leaves a little sack that has venom in it, so it's got this poison.
#Nectar flower hive skin
The stinger gets hooked into your skin and then when the bee tries to fly away the hook stays in and pulls out the bee's abdomen as it flies away. Honeybees die when they sting because their stinger has a barb on it, like a fish hook. So they are willing to sacrifice a few bees to make sure the whole colony can survive. But when a honeybee stings something it dies! Honeybees are social insects that depend on their colony to survive. In nature, everything is food for something else, so the bees need protection. Or a bear will come in and the bear likes to eat the baby bees, the little fat chunky larvae, and I'm sure they'll take a little honey dip on the side." "They'll come and scratch on the door at night and the bees will come out to see what's happening and the skunks will scoop them up by the handful and eat them up.

"Skunks want to eat bees," for example, Hayden explains. But why do they do it? Bees sting to protect their hive and defend their honey from potential predators. The bees start to eat honey when they smell smoke, which makes them sleepy. VPR Beekeepers use smoke to keep bees calm when they open up a hive box. But they make more than they need, so beekeepers take the extra honey out of the hive and leave them enough to make it through the winter. But we're trying ot market honey so we don't use that term."īees keep the honey in storage for the winter months when there are no flowers. "Some people say it's like bee puke, they're vomiting it back up. "It takes so many trips from a bee going back and forth collecting nectar just to get a teaspoon of honey. They fan it with their wings to evaporate some of the moisture in the liquid.

"They use that to feed their young mostly."īut the nectar is what they turn into honey. "Pollen is like protein, one of the building blocks of the animal bodies," John Hayden explains. And if you're curious about how humans reproduce, we've got just the episode for you here.)īees take the pollen and nectar back to their hives and put it into the honeycomb, six-sided cells they have built out with wax. (We have a lot more about how pollination works here. That's called pollination and that's how flowers reproduce. As they move from flower to flower, they leave a little bit of that pollen on each new flower they visit. The bees climb onto or into the flower and suck up the nectar with their straw-like mouth and collect it in a little sac called a crop. Nectar is the sweet liquid that entices the bees to the flower.
#Nectar flower hive download
You can download it here and color while you listen!īees collect nectar from flowers. This episode features a coloring page by Hilary Ann Love Glass. "How do bees make honey and why?" - Annika, 6, San Diego, CA
