Hello Peter, Adrian, and All:
 
Peter Hutton wrote:
>>Regurgitates nectar to hive bees who ingest and regurgitate, hold droplets
>>in proboscis and eventually paste onto cell walls. In each movement water
>>is extracted or evaporated.
 
Adrian Wenner wrote:
>   We used to call such a process "ripening," a term now seldom used.
>Peter is correct, though, as one can find in THE HIVE AND THE HONEY BEE
>(1992 edition: pp. 92,93).
 
My edition of H & HB, although about 30 years older did have, I found, a
good description of ripening, along with nice diagrams of the bees moutparts
in various stages of the manipulation process.  However, the mechanics of
how the process works still intrigues me.  I am curious as to how the water
is actually being extracted from the nectar by the bee.  Or is some water
just being evaporated during the process with the nectar being heated each
time it is reingested.
 
If the water was being absorbed by the bee it seems to me that it would take
an active mechanism to do so and not just a semi-permeable membrane.  The
sugar content of most of the nectars that bees collect, as Peter and H & HB
mentioned, is between 20 and 40 % , and so I imagine it is more concentrated
than the bees body fluids, and so osmosis would not tend to take water from it.
 
I would appreciate any more thoughts on this.
 
Stan