Why do bees make honey?

Question

Do bees produce them as a food source? It seems really weird that they would go through so much trouble to make honey, when they could be instead feeding on something else. Or is it a byproduct of them building their nest? Anyway, why do bees make honey exactly?

Answer 1

Bees do eat honey. Honey is excellent food source for the long cold winter when the flowers aren’t blooming. Since bees rely on nectar of these flowers to produce the honey, with little available source, they would need to store up an abundance of honey as much as they can. That’s where the saying “as busy as a bee” comes from, they spend every second they have foraging flowers and making honey in order to survive the climate. It’s really the ideal food too, with high nutrition and sugar to keep them going. How the honey is made keeps them from being able to spoil, with the high concentration of sugar within them that bacteria and fungi would not grow. It really is the ideal food for storage.

Answer 2

I visited a bee farm last weekend, learned a lot of new things, and of course I asked our fun bee farmer Mr. Jones the same question: why do bees make honey, which I’m always curious about just like you. He told me the bee larvae survive solely on the honey. Being a very social insect that live in a colony, the division of labor is important. Within the hive, a single queen bee rule, with a single purpose to produce the children. The worker bees are the essential elements of the hive function, they do everything from making wax to building the honeycomb, caring for the larvae or young bees, and making the honey. The larvae’s main source of food is the honey that is produced by worker bees, while the bees themselves could feed on nectar and pollen directly from the flowers. The honey keeps the hive going and ensures the continuation of the colony.