How do you get silk from silk worms?

Question

Saw a film yesterday called Silk. And it was about importing silk eggs from Japan to make silk in England. But it never actually explained how the silk is made. Does anybody out there have an idea? And how do spiders make a web? Does it come out of their bum? Curious, really. And how do we get honey from bees? Thank you, Simon

Answer 1

Honey is actually nectar that the bees collect from millions of flowers.  And yes, we do "steal" it from them.

Answer 2

3 questions in one: you're greedy. I am not an expert BUT, you feed silkworms on mulberry leaves(they're caterpillars)until they pupate then drop the coccoons into warm water and the cocoons unravel into a long strand of silk. Spiders have a special gland that extrudes the sticky silk they use to spin a web. Honey from bees I'm not sure about, but I think it is used to feed the bee pupae in a hive and we steal it from them.

If you are REALLY  interested either Google these questions or look them up in an encyclopaedia to get a more full explanation.

Answer 3

the silkworm makes its coocoon out of silk, which comes out of its body like a spiders does. It wraps the thread around itself, again and again and again... .until it is completly covered. then it relaxes and starts changing into an adult. however, before it gets that chance to break out and destroy the tiny threads, the humans take them (not all, or they would have no adults to breed with, of course) and put them in hot water to kill them and soften the coocoon. then they very carefully unwind the thread, which is so thin that I think seven of them are intertwined to make one thin silk thread that you would put on a needle to sew. That's why silk was so expensive - very labour intensive. Now they have little machines to help unravel the coocoons, but still, it's not as easy as making cotton thread. Not sure why this wasn't explained in the documentary. I bet wikipedia has a good article about this.