Friday, October 10, 2008

Anyone have a recipe for honey?

Anna is learning about insects in Science. Some of it is pretty interesting, although, I'm not sure when we actually need this information in life. The only real advantage to learning about insects I can see, unless you end up being an entomologist, is to realize just how clever our Creator God is which does make it worthwhile.

Anyway, here's a brief conversation during our lesson yesterday:

Anna: I wish bees would become extinct.
Mom: Why?
Anna: Because they sting.
Mom: Then we'd have no honey!
Anna: Can't we just find a recipe for it?

We had a good, long laugh about that one. So I did some digging and it would indeed appear that the only recipe for honey is from bee barf. Read and/or watch below.

I found a cool website called HowStuff Works. I couldn't figure out how to embed the video but it's worth watching. There are all types of cool science videos there.

HOW DO BEES MAKE HONEY? (a portion from a cleaned up version)
Bees begin to make honey by gathering nectar from the flowers they find. This nectar mixture is carried back to the hive and placed into the honeycomb cells that the bees have made inside the hive. Honeybees carry the nectar and mix it with enzymes in a special pouch in their bodies. This begins the process of changing the nectar into honey. The bees then evaporate much of the water out of the nectar mixture to thicken it. Once it becomes honey the bees put a cap of beeswax over the top of each cell.

This one is kinda boring but educational and short.



This one is interesting and very educational but lengthy.



Words like digest, secrete and regurgitate really make me want to go eat a big ol' spoon full of the tasty, sweet throw-up - yum!

2 comments:

Frank Bennett said...

I take it you are really enjoying this home school thing? Now I know why I never really liked honey.
Thanks for the fun read!
Suzanne

Andrea said...

For the most part we are enjoying it. It definitely has it's challenges. I'm hanging on to this funny stuff, though, cause it's just necessary for my sanity.

Glad you enjoyed the post.