Yes, I know you want to learn how they make it. No, they do not churn it in a churn; they really churn it, though. That is a good guess. They churn it in their honey-sac stomachs. The honey bees love pollen, too. It is their flour—pollen flour—and they carry it to their hives in little basket-like places on their legs.
The Insects Carry Pollen
Now, the bees in coming to get this feast of good things to eat—the nectar for honey, and the pollen for bee-flour, both of which are very necessary for bees—do just exactly what the flowers want them to do above everything—to carry pollen from some anthers to the pistil. This they do without knowing what a great kindness they are bestowing upon the flowers.
They think they are just doing their duty in gathering nectar to make honey and pollen for bee-flour, but in dipping their heads down into the deep calyx where the nectar is stored, they get their furry bodies covered with pollen, and when they come out of that flower, or go to visit another, they spread pollen all over the stigma of the pistil! And when the pollen is spread on the stigma of the pistil, somehow, in some wonderful way it sinks down through the style into the ovary where the dear little seed baby is born.
If you cut open an old bloom going to seed you will see a number of seed babies in the ovary from which they will fall when they are ripe.
Bumble Bees Help
Sometimes flowers are very particular as to just what insect shall do this work for them. For instance, the clover hides its nectar too deep for the honey bee’s tongue to reach; so the bumble bee and butterfly do most of the work of pollination for the clovers.
The little butter-and-eggs flower depends upon bumble bees, too, to bring pollen to the pistil, for she closes the nectar holder with so tight a lip that the weight of the honey bee is not heavy enough to open it.