Knowledge › Nature
🐝
Nature · Beginner English
Why do bees make honey?
1Read
Bees make honey as food for winter and rainy days, when there are no flowers to visit.
A bee flies to a flower and drinks nectar, a sweet juice. She stores it in a special stomach, not the one she uses for eating.
Back at the hive, she passes the nectar to other bees, mouth to mouth. Each bee adds enzymes that change the sugars. Then they spread the nectar in the honeycomb and fan it with their wings until most of the water dries out.
What is left is thick, golden honey. It never goes bad — honey found in 3,000-year-old Egyptian tombs was still good to eat. One jar takes about 50,000 bee trips to flowers.
2Words to learn
nectarsweet liquid in flowers
hivea bee’s home
enzymea natural substance that changes food
tomba place where a dead person is kept
3Check your understanding
Question 1 of 3Multiple choice
Why do bees make honey?
4Explain it
Speaking challenge
Tell the journey of one drop of honey from flower to jar.
0:45
Say it out loud. Nobody is listening — that’s the point. Mistakes are allowed.