This is the journey of honey. First of all the worker bees suck the nectar out of the flowers surrounding their hive, which they then store in their honey sacks. After this they fly back to the hive where other workers suck the nectar out of the other bees sack and chew it before putting it into wax cells that yet more worker made. Then they fan it with their wings until most of the water content has evaporated. All that's left now is thick gooey honey. The last step for them is to cap it of with bees wax.This is where the bee keeper comes in; first they spray the hive with smoke from burning pine needles which lets the bees know he is coming (bees will sting if taken by surprise). Then he takes the wooden frames that hold the wax cells and the honey out and they go off a honey factory. There are 100's of 1000's of bees per hive, and the Queen bee will lay up to 2000 eggs a day!
When the frames reach the factory they are put into an 'uncaping machine' where lots of different blades shave the wax caps of. When this is done someone will scrape of the remaining bits of wax with a scraper. The frames are then sent off to another machine called an extractor which spins around and around and around and around.... and around until all of the honey is forced out of the cells. The last step before bottling is to filter the honey to make sure that there is no wax left in it.At the bottling station all the jars are steam cleaned, then honey is squirted into each of them. The lids and branding stickers are put on by special machines. Then it's off to the shelves!!!
