This same warm spell, or a new food source, may stimulate egg laying and brood rearing and cause nurse bees to produce glandul arly secreted food. It is important that the bees maximize their profits at all of these times, but since worker bees are always ready to respond to the needs of the colony, they can do so. They live exclusively on pollen and honey. Honey is their source of carbohydrate, and pollen is their source of protein and the small amount of fat they may store. There is a fat body in worker bees in the Fall to aid in Winter survival.
Honey bees gather water they use to dilute honey to be fed to larvae and to cool the hive.
Propolis is used li ke varnish to protect the inside of their hive. Propolis also contains natural antibiotics, and these give the interior of a bee nest the same protection they give a tree wound. About Honey Honey bees make honey from nectar that plants produce and give to bees as a reward for pollinating them. Nectar is predominately water and the sugar sucrose. An enzyme, invertase, converts most of the sucrose into two six-carbon sugars, glucose and fructose.