BEE, HONEY AND VENOM

Honey is a sweet-tasting, viscous liquid made by bees from the nectar (an aqueous liquid whose main ingredient is sucrose) of flowering plants.

Worker bees collect nectar by transferring it from the flowering plants to their 'honey stomach' (which is different from their normal stomach). You can see the two stomach inside the bee, however, their sizes are not proportional as I didn't have enough space to show the reaction inside the 'honey stomach'. In this stomach, the nectar is mixed with secreted enzymes such as invertases, which breaks down the sucrose within the nectar into its monomer sugars (glucose and fructose).

Once the worker bee has returned to the hive, it regurgitates the contents of its honey stomach and transfers it to another worker bee before flying off in search of more nectar. This second worker bee continues the breakdown of the sucrose within the nectar for up to 20 minutes until the majority of it is hydrolyzed. At this point, the mixture can be as much as 70% water and needs significant drying before it becomes honey. It is then deposited in the hive's honeycomb, where more worker bees fan it with their wings in order to drive the evaporation of the excess water (this takes a few days). I couldn't physically draw many bees working on the honeycomb without it looking messy and disorganised; instead, there is a flying hand-fan with bees on it. That serves the same purpose.

Once it's dry enough, the worker bees 'cap' the top of the honeycomb cell with wax, thereby sealing it to prevent the honey regaining any moisture from the air. On a side note- the major component of the honeycomb within a hive are beeswax and propolis. Propolis is a generic name for a substance, sometimes referred to as 'bee glue', which is formed by bees through collecting resinous material from plants. Following this path, I drew dripping resin from the top of the honeycomb. The resin is also found on the tree branches; this shows where the resin came from. After the waxing process, the amount of water in the honey is so low that, microbes are unable to grow in it. Any microbial cell that tries to grow in the honey will dehydrate quickly, as water will move from it into the surroundings honey by osmosis.

Worker bees are able to protect their hive and their colony with a venom they dispense from a modified ovipositor (the organ that, had they turned into queens, would be used to lay eggs). Queen bees are also able to sting in order to defend themselves against rival queens who might enter their hive. Bee venom is a complex mixture of substances including proteins, peptides and small molecules; among the components in the venom solution is melittin. Melittin has such a large complicated structure that I couldn't possibly draw it in the space given; therefore I printed it on a tracing paper and glued it on the honeycomb. This way you can see its structure and it doesn't hide anything underneath either. Bees are protective of their hives and they are willing to use melittin; this is the reason why I put the structure on top of the honeycomb. It's the first barrier of defence against attacks.

In recent years, manuka honey has become highly sought after. This is the honey produced with nectar from flowers of the manuka bush, a plant indigenous to New Zealand. Because of the demand and increased price it can command, counterfeit manuka honey is often sold. To prevent this, research has been done to find various markers that can differentiate manuka honey from other honey. Lepteridine and methylglyoxal (or 2-oxopropanal) are found to occur in honey derived from the nectar of many plants. The amount of methylglyoxal is highest in manuka honey, allowing for the quality of commercial manuka honey to be graded according to its methylglyoxal content. The flower in the drawing is, in fact, the manuka flower; methylglyoxal has been drawn twice to show its abundance in the flower. Usually, when a reaction has an excess of a reactant, it's shown in the chemical formula as being present in two molecules. Hence why I have two methylglyoxal.

Lastly, honey bees make honey as a way of storing food to eat over the cooler winter period, when they are unable to forage there are fewer flowers from which to gather food. Honey is ideal for bees- it's full of nutrients and is a great energy food because it is high in sugars. Honey bees are going extinct because of excessive use of pesticides in crops and certain blood-sucking parasites that only reproduce in bee colonies. To show this aspect, I drew eye bags under the bee's eye. The remaining bees are overworked because of the lack of them around the world.