Why do bees store honey?
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Bees store honey because it is a food that they can eat when there is not much else to eat.
1. Bees need energy to fly and to keep their hive warm.
2. Sugar is a good source of energy for bees.
3. Honey is a concentrated form of sugar, so it provides more energy per ounce than other sugar sources.
4. By storing honey, bees can have a constant supply of energy, even when flowers are not blooming and there are no nectar sources available.
During winter, or when resources get scarce (a drought or anything that might decrease flower availability), or when it’s time to swarm, previously stored resources will come in handy. Wasps for example don’t make honey (well, some do, but most don’t) because they don’t need food stores, since their colony only lasts a few months and dies out in the winter, also they don’t usually propagate by swarming, and their overall diet is wider meaning they can exploit other sources of food if one becomes scarce.
Bees store honey for winter when it is too cold for them to leave the hive, not that there would be anything to feed off during winter either. So they spend their winters in the hive in a sort of hibernation feeding off their stores of honey to keep the hive warm enough so they do not freeze or starve to death.
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