What do bees use honey for

Whilst they may be able to forage on a dry, cold day, it's unlikely there will be many flowers for them to forage on. For this reason, they collect, then store their food to last them through the winter months when there are fewer flowers. It's a good idea to plant flowers and shrubs that flower early so that honey bees will be able to feed again in cold weather.

Below is a photograph of a honey bee worker foraging on a winter flowering shrub called Daphne 'Jacqueline Postill'. The photograph was taken on a very cold day in a public garden, but there were many shrubs in flower from the end of January so that there was plenty for hungry honey bees to feed on. Assuming there is plenty of food available for the bees from plant and tree blossoms , and assuming the weather is okay for the honey bees to venture out, then hopefully there is plenty of honey so that it's alright for humans to take some of it.

Remember that in the wild, predation is natural. Mammals such as the honey badger , o ther insects such as wasps, hornets, and even other bees , and sometimes birds often with the help of another predator will steal some of the honey from honey bee nests!

Skilled beekeepers have a good idea about how much honey they can take without harming a colony. There's more to honey than meets the eye! Honey is a sugary substance made by bees using the nectar they have collected from flowers. The bees mix this with a special substance called the ' bee enzyme '.

A basic scientific formula is as follows:. There are different presentations set, comb honey and so on and there are also subtle differences between honeys from different bee hives, depending on where the bees have been foraging.

For further information, take a look at my page: Types Of Honey. The honey you are familiar with, is made only by honey bees. Bumble bees don't make honey, instead, they have little pots of nectar. Nectar is the main ingredient for honey and also the main source of energy for bees. Once a worker honey bee returns to the colony, it passes the nectar onto another younger bee called a house bee between days old.

House bees take the nectar inside the colony and pack it away in hexagon-shaped beeswax honey cells. They then turn the nectar into honey by drying it out using a warm breeze made with their wings. Once the honey has dried out, they put a lid over the honey cell using fresh beeswax — kind of like a little honey jar. Because nectar comes from flowers, there are hundreds of different types of honey with different colours, smells and flavours.

Some honey can even be used as medicine. When they visit flowers, they also collect pollen — which is a great source of protein to keep them healthy and strong. Pollen is a kind of powder which flowering plants, trees and grasses make and must spread to help more of the same plants grow around them.

Pollen can spread in ways such as being blown around by the air, or being carried between two of the same plant by an insect. So by transferring pollen between flowers, bees also help pollinate flowers. Honey and nectar collected by bees contains both sugar and carbohydrates, which produce energy. This energy is converted to body fat and is stored for future use during cold weather. Honey bees obtain necessary vitamins from royal jelly, pollen and various microorganisms within the hive.

If worker bees collect and store significant amounts of pollen, a colony has no need to seek out alternate protein sources. Honey Bee Behavior. What Do Honey Bees Eat? Honey Bee Dance. Honey Bee Pollination. Difference Between Honey Bees and Wasps. Honey Bee Sting. Anatomy of a Honey Bee Sting. Call Residential Commercial.