Reader TTS

You like honey, right? Well, it's bee puke. But whatever. Honey is great. I don't care what insect puked it up. But bees, man, let me tell you. There's an incredible amount of

hierarchy and guess what else when it comes to honey--that's right, chemistry. [SPLASH] Worker bees spend their days zipping around from flower to flower slurping up nectar hitting up

as many as 1,500 flowers each time they leave the hive. Nectar is delicious, as all bees know. But bees' tiny fuzzy, sting-y bodies can't use the sucrose in nectar directly. They

have to digest it first and this is where the puking comes in. When worker bees drink nectar, some of it goes into their regular stomachs so that they can keep their energy up to forage some

more. But most of it goes into a special nectar-only storage stomach to bring back to the hive. After their bellies are full, the worker bees return to the hive to find a processor bee a

stay at home bee, if you will and regurgitates the nectar into the other bee's mouth. Why, you ask in horror? Well, it's a team effort. As the worker bee flies back to the hive,

enzymes produced by the processor bees begin to break down the sucrose. Once back, they pass the nectar to processor bees, [Bee enzymes: invertase, amylase, others] who continue to break

down the nectar into fructose and glucose. Quick fun fact, bees jobs are assigned by their age. Processor bees are middle aged bees since they have the most amount of enzymes in their

stomachs, whereas older bees stop producing the enzymes as they age, which is when they become the worker bees. So after half an hour, the processor bees have broken down the nectar and

turned it into honey. From there, bees puke the honey into one of those little honeycomb holes for safekeeping (until bears and humans rob them). But there's one more step. Once the

honey has been regurgitated into the honeycomb, it's still about 70 percent water. So the processor bees spend the next few days fanning the honeycomb holes with their wings until it

dries out to just under 18% water. Then they secrete out wax to seal the the honey in the comb. Although it's hard work, in a bee's entire life, she might make one-twelfth of a

teaspoon of. But boy is it tasty. Who knew there was all this chemistry in honey? What's your favorite use for honey? And do vegans eat honey? These are the kind of questions that keep

me up at night...