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There are two raw ingredients that bees collect to convert into the foods they eat for nourishment: pollen and nectar.

The actual pollen-based food bees eat is called beebread. It’s processed from the pollen that the field bees collect from flowering plants. This is the bees’ source of protein. According to the USDA, pollen has between 2.5 percent to 61 percent protein content (depending upon its source). Visiting a flower, the foraging bee uses the pollen baskets on her rear legs to store and transport the pollen home (see Figure 2-1). Although pollen is not used by the bees to make honey, grains of pollen are found in all honeys and become part of the nutritional goodness of honey.

Photo by Stephen Ausmus, USDA Agricultural Research Service

FIGURE 2-1: Photo of a worker field bee collecting pollen. Note the pollen baskets on her rear legs packed with pollen for the return trip to the hive.

The field bees also forage flowering plants to collect nectar. This is what the bees use to make honey. Once they have chosen an attractive, sweet-smelling flower, they suck up nectar with their long, straw-like tongue (see Figure 2-2). Bees visit many flowers (about 40 per minute), eventually carrying the collected nectar back to their colony in a distension of the esophagus called a honey sac (also sometimes called the honey stomach). They can carry more than their own weight in nectar. Once back in the hive, the house worker bees take over (see the “Busy as a bee” sidebar).

USGS Native Bee Lab

FIGURE 2-2: Note the long tongue on this honey bee. It unrolls like a noisemaker on New Year’s Eve.