Why do bees collect nectar?

Bees collecting flowers and nectar is almost a well-known thing. Although the behavior of bees is mainly dominated by instinct, honey will never collect nectar for nothing, which means that bees have a strong purpose Yes, let ’s take a look at what the bees collect nectar for!

1, the purpose of bees to collect nectar

The main foods of bees in nature are nectar and pollen. Among them, pollen is the reproductive cells in the stamens of the flowering plant, and nectar is the sugary liquid secreted by the nectary of the plant. However, both nectar and pollen need to be harvested by the plant. However, most plants do not flower and secrete honey.In some seasons, bees do not collect nectar and pollen at all, so bees must be prepared for the season when food is scarce. The best way is to collect and store in large quantities when food is abundant.

2, Tools for bees to collect honey

Bees are effective tools for specializing in nectar collection. They mainly include chewing and sucking mouthparts and highly swellable honey sacs. The chewing and sucking mouthparts can form complex food tubes to suck nectar, and are located in The honey sac between the esophagus and the forelimb can temporarily store nectar, When collecting honey, the bee sucks nectar from the flower with a mouthpiece and stores it in a honey sac. After the honey sac is filled with nectar, the bee returns to the hive and then spit out the nectar, thereby completing the nectar collected from the flower into the hive. process.

3, Uses of nectar collected

The main purpose of bees to collect nectar is to obtain food. Therefore, most of the nectar is consumed by the colony after being collected by the bees, At this time, the nectar that can’t be consumed by the bee colony will be made into honey by the worker bees. In fact, this is the same reason as the farmers save the food after drying in the autumn after harvesting. When the nectar source is scarce or the climate is not suitable, the bee colony will feed on the reserved honey.

Summary: Bees collect nectar just to obtain and store food. Most of these nectar collected are consumed by bee colonies, The rest of the honey produced by worker bees is stored in the hive, which means that the bee harvesting of honey is an instinct-driven foraging behavior.