Bees fly twice round the Earth for one jar of honey.
- A flower has no honey: its nectar is often 60 to 80 per cent water.
- Bees start drying nectar on the flower and finish with thousands of fanning wings.
- Honey is so dry that pots thousands of years old survive in Egyptian tombs.
A jar of honey is a summer, with the water taken out.
Words for the text
- nectar
- A sweet, watery liquid inside many flowers.
- hive
- The home of a group of honey bees.
- forager
- A bee that flies out to find food.
- honey stomach
- A special bag inside a bee for carrying nectar.
- enzyme
- A natural chemical that helps to change one thing into another.
The opening of the text
Twice round the world
Pick up a jar of honey. It weighs 454 grams, or one pound. To fill it, bees flew about 88,000 kilometres. That is more than twice round the Earth.
On the way, they visited about two million flowers. Each bee did only a tiny part of the work. In her whole life, one bee makes about a twelfth of a teaspoon.
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