Beekeeping involves more than simply removing honey from the hive. The recent decline in the native bee population has increased agricultural reliance on the managed honeybee. Honey is produced by honeybees, which are vegetarian insects. Honeybees eat pollen to obtain protein, fat, and vitamins, and they make honey from the nectar of flowers for an energy source. Bees reduce the water content of the nectar both by fanning it with their wings and by manipulating the liquid in their mouths.
Bees create honey through the use of their digestive enzyme, invertase.
The solution is sometimes given to the bees in the early spring to stimulate the queen to lay more eggs and build up the size and strength of the colony. Bees will receive the sugar solution if the beekeeper removed too much honey during the year, because each hive requires fifty to sixty pounds of honey in the fall to survive the entire winter. Bees are not fed the sucrose solution during the collecting season when they produce enough honey to supply both the beekeeper's and the hive's demands. However, bees sometimes collect more nectar when they are provided with more storage room. Beekeepers sometimes feed pollen substitutes to the bees in early spring when there is not enough natural pollen in the foraging area.