One of the first enzymes to go to work is invertase, which snips the nectar"s sucrose molecules in half, yielding the simple sugars glucose and fructose (strangely, research suggests that bees don"t have the genes to make this sucrose-snipping enzyme – a microbe that lives in bee guts probably makes it). Upon returning to the hive, the honey bee then regurgitates the payload to the first of an assembly line of bees. The mouth-to-mouth passage that follows lowers the water content and introduces more enzymes, processes that continue the nectar breakdown and stop microbes from growing.