Short answer
- Bees eat mainly two foods from flowers: nectar for energy and pollen for protein. Nectar is a sugary liquid that fuels flight and daily work. Pollen supplies protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals, and it is especially important for growing larvae and for nurse bees that make brood food. Water is the third essential item, used for drinking, for preparing liquid brood food, and for cooling the hive on hot days. That answer needs one qualification. The word bee covers thousands of species, and diet changes with species, caste, age, and season. A honey bee queen is fed royal jelly, while her workers eat nectar and pollen products and, in winter, stored honey. A bumble bee queen fattens up before a long winter sleep. A solitary bee mother leaves each offspring a packed lunch of pollen and nectar and never feeds it again. Three known vulture bee species, a small group of tropical stingless bees, feed exclusively on carrion for protein, while still taking sugars from fruit and other plant secretions.
The Two Foods at the Center of the Diet
Think of nectar as fuel and pollen as building material. A bee can fly on nectar alone for a short time, but it cannot grow, rear brood, or stay healthy without pollen. Likewise, pollen alone cannot power flight and foraging.
Nectar is a sugary liquid made by flowers to attract visitors. Washington State University Extension describes nectar sugar content as ranging from 5 to 75 percent, with most nectars falling between 20 and 40 percent sugar. That range explains why bees visit some flowers more eagerly than others and why honey from different flowers tastes different.
Pollen is the fine, powdery material produced by the male parts of flowers. Pollen is the only natural source of protein and lipids for honey bees, according to Cornell Cooperative Extension, and Washington State University Extension lists it as the source of protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals. Lancaster University notes that pollen protein content varies a great deal between plant species, so a diet drawn from many kinds of flowers is generally more balanced than one drawn from a single kind.
Water completes the basic diet. Cornell Cooperative Extension lists three jobs for water in a honey bee colony: maintaining cell osmosis, preparing liquid brood food, and cooling the hive through evaporation. Much of a colony’s water need is met by nectar itself, but on hot days or when nectar is limited, foragers collect water from streams or ponds. Washington State University Extension adds that bees use water to regulate temperature and humidity in the hive and obtain trace amounts of salt from water sources.
| Food | Main nutrients | Main job |
|---|---|---|
| Nectar | Sugars and water | Energy for flight and hive work |
| Pollen | Protein, fats, vitamins, minerals | Growth, brood rearing, body maintenance |
| Honey (stored nectar) | Concentrated sugars and water | Energy when flowers are not blooming |
| Bee bread (stored pollen) | Pollen nutrients, made more available by storage | Protein food for larvae and nurse bees |
| Royal jelly (gland secretion) | Protein rich secretion from nurse bees | Food for young larvae and queens |
| Water | Water and trace minerals, including salt | Drinking, brood food, hive cooling |
How a Bee Collects and Carries Its Food
A foraging bee drinks nectar through her proboscis, a tongue like tube that works like a straw, and stores it in a holding organ called the honey crop. Washington State University Extension explains that the crop has a one way valve that lets the bee use a little nectar for her own daily activity while storing the rest for the colony.
Pollen travels differently. As a bee brushes against flowers, pollen grains stick to the branched hairs covering her body. She grooms them off and packs them into the corbicula, or pollen basket, on each hind leg. A bee returning with bright yellow, orange, white, or even blue pollen pellets is advertising which plants she visited, because pollen color varies by plant species.
Back at the hive, nectar is passed from bee to bee and dried into honey for storage, a process covered in full in the companion article on how bees make honey. Pollen is packed into comb cells, mixed with a little honey, and stored as bee bread. Sharing food is also how a colony feeds bees that never leave the nest: foragers and nurse bees pass food mouth to mouth, a transfer scientists call trophallaxis, or deliver prepared brood food directly to larvae.
What Honey Bees Eat, by Caste
Honey bees are the best studied bees, and their diet is the most divided by caste. The same colony contains a queen, thousands of female workers, and, in spring and summer, male drones. Age matters too, because a worker’s job, and therefore her diet, changes as she grows older.
The queen: fed for a lifetime
An adult honey bee queen does not forage. She is fed by worker attendants, and her adult diet is dominated by royal jelly, the protein rich secretion produced in the head glands of nurse bees. Penn State Extension describes royal jelly as exuded from the hypopharyngeal glands of worker bees, glands largest in nurse bees between 6 and 12 days old. Nurse bees consume large quantities of pollen and nectar to produce it.
Worker bees: the diet changes with the job
Young adult workers stay inside the hive as nurse bees, tending brood and producing brood food. That work is protein hungry. Washington State University Extension notes that nurse bees consume pollen to produce brood food in their head glands, and that adult bees without access to protein in the first ten days of life have shorter lifespans. A young worker that misses that early protein window may not develop her glands fully, and her ability to feed the next generation suffers.
Older workers become foragers, leaving the hive to collect nectar and pollen. Their daily work is energy hungry, so carbohydrates dominate their diet at this stage, drawn from nectar and honey. Cornell Cooperative Extension gives a useful sense of scale: an adult worker honey bee consumes 3.4 to 4.3 milligrams of pollen per day, and requires 4 milligrams of utilizable sugars per day. Those figures describe an average adult worker, but they show the balance clearly. Some foragers focus on nectar, some on pollen, and some collect both.
Drones: fed by the colony
Drones are male honey bees. They do not forage, tend brood, build comb, or guard the hive, and they are fed by workers for as long as they are kept in the colony. Their diet is second hand: nectar, honey, and brood food delivered by workers. In autumn, when mating opportunities end and food becomes precious, workers stop feeding drones and drive them from the hive.
Larvae: the most carefully fed bees in the hive
No bees are fed more attentively than larvae. Penn State Extension reports that every larva receives about 10,000 nurse bee feeding visits during development, an average of one visit every 43 seconds. All larvae get royal jelly exclusively for the first three days after hatching. On the third day, worker and drone larvae switch to worker jelly, a mix of royal jelly, pollen, and nectar, and later to food based on bee bread and honey. Queen larvae keep receiving royal jelly in larger amounts throughout development.
| Honey bee | What it eats | Who feeds it |
|---|---|---|
| Queen larva | Royal jelly throughout development | Nurse bees |
| Worker larva | Royal jelly for three days, then worker jelly | Nurse bees |
| Drone larva | Royal jelly first, then worker jelly | Nurse bees |
| Adult queen | Royal jelly and food delivered by attendants | Worker attendants |
| Nurse worker | Pollen and nectar, in large amounts, to make brood food | Herself, from hive stores |
| Forager worker | Nectar and honey for energy, plus pollen | Herself, from flowers and stores |
| Drone | Nectar, honey, and brood food delivered by workers | Workers, until autumn eviction |
Where the Food Goes: Honey, Bee Bread, and Royal Jelly
The full step by step story of honey making, including enzymes, drying, and wax capping, belongs to the article on how bees make honey, and lifespan figures belong to the article on how long bees live.
Honey is nectar that has been processed and dried until it keeps. Washington State University Extension puts ripe honey at 17 to 18 percent water, low enough that microorganisms cannot grow in it, and states that honey is consumed as a primary food by adult bees when floral nectar is not available. Honey is the colony’s winter pantry, eaten directly from the comb when foraging is impossible.
Bee bread is the parallel store for pollen. Washington State University Extension describes foragers placing pollen in a comb cell, other workers mashing it into a paste, and the pollen then being mixed with a bit of honey to form bee bread. Lancaster University adds that fermentation produces lactic acid, which protects it from bacteria and fungi that could rot it. Washington State University Extension notes that worker bees tend to prefer fresh pollen over older bee bread.
Royal jelly is not stored in the same way. It is made on demand by nurse bees from the pollen and nectar they eat, and fed directly to larvae and to the queen, so a spring protein shortage hits brood rearing quickly.
What Bumble Bees Eat
Bumble bees eat the same two flower foods, nectar and pollen, but they organize eating around a very different year. A bumble bee colony does not overwinter as a colony. It overwinters as a single mated queen, alone underground, and the whole colony must be rebuilt each spring from her stored body reserves and her early foraging.
Penn State Extension describes the spring sequence clearly. Queens emerge from their winter shelters and must forage for pollen and nectar before they can lay eggs, because those foods provide the proteins and carbohydrates that activate the ovaries and start egg laying. The queen then forms wax pots for nectar storage and feeds her first brood on pollen and nectar, continuing to forage herself until the first workers emerge after about three to four weeks. From that point, the queen stays inside laying eggs, while workers take over foraging and brood care.
Autumn is the fattening season, and it decides next year’s colonies. Penn State Extension states that newly emerged virgin queens leave the colony to mate and fill up on pollen and nectar in preparation for diapause, the dormant winter state. During diapause, which can last six to nine months, the mated queen does not feed at all. She lives on nutrients stored in her fat body, built from late season pollen and nectar.
What Solitary Bees Eat
Most bee species are solitary, which changes the meaning of diet completely. A solitary female has no workers, no nurse bees, and no colony store to draw on. She must eat for herself and, at the same time, gather and pack all the food her offspring will ever receive.
Penn State Extension explains the basic pattern: all bees forage for nectar as an energy source for themselves and, in the case of females of non-parasitic species, for their larvae to feed on, while female non-parasitic bees also forage for pollen, primarily to provide their young with a source of protein. She builds a nest cell, lays one egg in it, and provisions it with a mass of pollen mixed with nectar. She then seals the cell and moves on. The larva eats the provision and emerges as an adult without ever being fed by its mother.
Mason bees and leafcutter bees carry pollen on hairs under the abdomen rather than on the hind legs, and they provision cells in cavities with pollen and nectar masses. Mining bees nest in the ground and do the same. Carpenter bees excavate tunnels in wood and provision each cell with pollen and nectar for one offspring.
Solitary bees also illustrate the specialist versus generalist split. Penn State Extension contrasts specialists, which rely on pollen from a single plant group, with generalists, which collect from a wide range of plants. Its Pennsylvania examples include three Macropis bees that specialize on loosestrife plants, and the squash bee, Eucera pruinosa, which relies on pollen from cultivated pumpkins and squash. Generalists include honey bees and the common eastern bumble bee, Bombus impatiens.
The Exceptions: Parasitic, Stingless, and Meat Eating Bees
Not every bee collects its own pollen, and a few do not eat plants at all. These exceptions test the simple nectar and pollen rule, and they are worth knowing precisely because they are exceptions, not because they change the rule for garden bees.
Parasitic, or cuckoo, bees do not provision nests for their own young. Penn State Extension describes cuckoo bees as invading the nest of a host bee and laying an egg in it for the host to care for. The adult cuckoo bee still visits flowers for nectar, but the female does not collect pollen for larvae. Her offspring eat the host’s provision instead. Social parasitic bumble bees infiltrate a colony and effectively replace its queen so their own offspring are reared by host workers.
Stingless bees, a large tropical group, are social and store food, but they store honey and pollen in wax pots rather than in comb. Their basic diet is still nectar and pollen.
The true break with the plant diet comes from vulture bees. The Entomological Society of America notes that Trigona hypogea, Trigona necrophaga, and Trigona crassipes are the only three known bee species in the world that feed exclusively on carrion. These Central and South American stingless bees use flesh as the protein source that other bees get from pollen. They still need sugars, which they take from fruit and other plant secretions.
How Diet Changes Through the Seasons
A bee’s diet follows the flowering calendar and the colony’s growth. Honey bee colonies show the pattern most clearly, because they must plan for winter.
In early spring, the colony wakes hungry. Washington State University Extension notes that before flowers are available, bees may need sugar syrup and supplemental protein as the colony begins to grow, and that protein is especially important while the colony is increasing its population. Cornell Cooperative Extension adds that after long and harsh winters, some colonies can starve, which is why bees forage at the first warm opportunity.
In spring and summer, when flowers are abundant, the diet is at its most natural and varied. Washington State University Extension states that beekeepers may not need to provide supplements when bees have plenty of floral resources. Foragers bring in fresh nectar and pollen daily, and the colony both grows and stores a surplus.
In late summer and early fall, the balance shifts from growth to storage. Washington State University Extension notes that after honey is removed, it may be important to feed sugar syrup so bees can build up carbohydrate stores for winter, and that the queen slows her egg laying in the fall, so protein requirements drop significantly.
In winter, honey bees eat stored honey and little else. They form a cluster around the queen, generate heat by vibrating their flight muscles, and move slowly across the comb to reach fresh honey stores. They rear almost no brood until late winter, so their protein need is at its lowest. A colony that enters winter with too little honey runs out of fuel for heat, so winter starvation is a carbohydrate failure first, even though protein mattered so much in spring.
| Season | Honey bee diet priority | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Early spring | Pollen and nectar, plus supplements if flowers are scarce | Brood rearing restarts; nurse bees need protein to make brood food |
| Spring and summer | Fresh nectar and fresh pollen, in large amounts | Colony growth, foraging energy, surplus storage |
| Late summer and fall | Honey storage first, pollen for winter bees second | Winter fuel stores are built; egg laying slows |
| Winter | Stored honey, with minimal brood rearing | Heat and survival until flowers return |
Other Foods, Substitutes, and Foods to Avoid
When flowers are scarce, bees are opportunists. They will take sugary liquids that are not nectar, and beekeepers sometimes offer foods that are not flowers at all. These substitutes can keep a colony alive, but they are not equal to a flower diet.
Honeydew is one natural substitute. It is a sugary liquid excreted by sap sucking insects such as aphids and scale insects, left on leaves and stems. Bees collect it when nectar is scarce and may even make a dark honeydew honey from it. It provides sugars, but it does not replace pollen, so it is a backup fuel rather than a balanced diet. Extrafloral nectar, secreted by glands on leaves and stems rather than inside flowers, is a closer substitute, but it is available only from certain plants and at certain times.
Very ripe or damaged fruit is another opportunistic food. Bees cannot bite into a whole, firm apple or plum, but they will drink juice from fruit that has split, fallen, or been opened by other animals. Fruit juice gives sugars and water, but no meaningful protein, so a colony living on fruit juice alone would still starve for protein even while it had energy. The same logic applies to sugar water left out in gardens: it is simply sugar and water, not nectar, and it contains no pollen, so it cannot support brood rearing on its own.
Beekeepers use two main supplements. Sugar syrup, made from granulated sugar and water, replaces carbohydrates only. It helps a colony draw comb, survive a gap in nectar flow, or build winter stores, and Washington State University Extension notes that beekeepers feed it when nectar is unavailable, such as before flowers bloom in spring or after they finish in fall. Pollen patties or pollen substitutes replace protein only, or at least attempt to. Neither supplement is honey or bee bread, and Washington State University Extension warns beekeepers never to feed sugar syrup when honey supers are on the colony, because concentrated sugar syrup cannot be sold as honey.
Do not put out honey for bees as a general practice. Honey from a shop or another colony is not the same as fresh nectar, and feeding it can create robbing behavior, where bees from strong colonies attack weaker ones for stored food. Plant flowers instead.
Bees do not eat leaves as food, although leafcutter bees cut leaf pieces to line their nests, which is construction, not eating. Bees do not normally eat seeds, soil, wood, or human food such as bread, cheese, or meat from a picnic table, and apart from carrion-eating stingless bees, they do not eat insects or meat.
How Much Do Bees Eat, and How to Help Them
Exact totals for a colony are hard to state, because they depend on colony size, weather, flower availability, and time of year. The per bee figures from Cornell Cooperative Extension give the most useful anchor: an adult worker honey bee consumes 3.4 to 4.3 milligrams of pollen per day and requires 4 milligrams of utilizable sugars per day.
The most useful thing a person can do for bee diet is to make flowers available across the whole season, not just in high summer. Early spring flowers feed colonies restarting brood rearing and bumble bee queens founding colonies. Summer flowers feed growing colonies. Late summer and fall flowers feed winter bees being reared and bumble bee queens fattening for diapause. A garden that blooms only in June leaves bees hungry in April and September. Diversity matters as much as timing. Add a shallow, safe water source with landing places, kept filled, with stones, corks, or floating wood for bees to land on.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do bees eat in simple terms? Bees eat nectar for energy and pollen for protein, plus water. Stored versions of those foods, honey and bee bread, feed colonies when flowers are not blooming.
Do bees eat honey? Yes. Honey bees eat stored honey, especially in winter and during rainy periods when they cannot forage. Honey is made from nectar, not from pollen, and it is the colony’s energy reserve.
Do bees eat pollen directly? Yes, but the route matters. Foragers collect pollen and pack it into cells, where it is stored as bee bread. Nurse bees eat pollen and bee bread to make brood food, and larvae eat brood food and, later, worker jelly and bee bread based food.
What do baby bees eat? All honey bee larvae get royal jelly exclusively for the first three days after hatching. Worker and drone larvae then switch to worker jelly, while queen larvae keep receiving royal jelly throughout development. Bumble bee and solitary bee larvae eat pollen and nectar provisions.
What do bees eat in winter? Honey bees eat stored honey in winter, clustered around the queen for warmth, with very little brood rearing and therefore low protein needs. Bumble bee queens do not eat at all during winter diapause, living on fat body reserves built from late season pollen and nectar.
Do bees drink water? Yes. Bees drink water, collect it for brood food, and use it to cool the hive by evaporation on hot days. Much of their water comes from nectar itself, but foragers also visit streams, ponds, and other water sources.
Do bees eat fruit? Bees will drink juice from very ripe, split, or damaged fruit when flowers are scarce, but fruit is not a normal or complete part of the bee diet. It provides sugars and water, but no meaningful protein, so it cannot replace pollen. Bees cannot bite into whole, firm fruit.
Do bees eat meat? Almost never. With the exception of three vulture bee species in Central and South America that feed exclusively on carrion, bees do not eat meat. Insects called meat bees at picnics are usually yellowjacket wasps, not bees.
Do bees eat sugar water? Bees will drink sugar water, and beekeepers feed sugar syrup as a carbohydrate supplement when nectar is scarce. Sugar syrup is not honey, and it does not contain pollen, so it cannot replace a flower diet on its own. Beekeepers do not feed syrup when honey supers are on a colony, because syrup cannot be sold as honey.
Why do bees need both nectar and pollen? Because the two foods do different jobs. Nectar supplies energy, and pollen supplies the building materials for growth, reproduction, and body maintenance. A colony with nectar but no pollen can fly but cannot rear brood well. A colony with pollen but no nectar can build bodies but cannot power foraging.
Do different bees eat different things? Yes, within the nectar and pollen framework. Specialists rely on pollen from one plant group, generalists use many plants, solitary bees eat provisions packed by their mothers, bumble bees eat from wax pots rather than comb, and vulture bees replace pollen protein with carrion protein.
What should I plant to feed bees? Plant a diverse mix of flowers that bloom from early spring through fall, including native plants, herbs, clovers, and fruit trees where space allows. Add a shallow, safe water source with landing places. Avoid relying on sugar water or honey dishes as bee food.
Sources & references
- Cornell Cooperative Extension, Monroe County, "Honey Bees and Honey," https://monroe.cce.cornell.edu/agriculture/seasonal-produce-highlights/honey-bees-honey (bees obtain all nutrition from a diverse mix of pollen and nectar; pollen is the only natural source of protein and lipids; adult worker honey bees consume 3.4 to 4.3 mg of pollen per day; adult workers require 4 mg of utilizable sugars per day; water needed for cell osmosis, liquid brood food, and hive cooling through evaporation; water needs usually met by nectar, with foragers collecting from streams or ponds on hot days or when nectar is limited; colonies can starve after long and harsh winters)
- Washington State University, WSU Bee Program, "Honey Bee Nutrition (ABEJAS Module 1.3)," https://cahnrs.wsu.edu/descriptive-transcripts/extension/honey-bee-nutrition-abejas-module-1-3/ (diet components: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, micronutrients including vitamins, minerals, and salt, and water; nectar sugar 5 to 75 percent, most 20 to 40 percent; proboscis and honey crop with a one way valve; honey ripe at 17 to 18 percent water; honey consumed as a primary food when floral nectar is unavailable; sugar syrup supplement when nectar is unavailable; pollen as protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals; pollen baskets on hind legs; pollen packed into cells and mixed with a bit of honey to form bee bread; workers prefer fresh pollen over older bee bread; nurse bees consume pollen to produce brood food in head glands; adults without protein in the first ten days have shorter lifespans; water for temperature and humidity regulation and trace salt; early spring protein importance; late summer and fall queen egg laying slows and protein requirements drop significantly; never feed sugar syrup when honey supers are on, because concentrated syrup cannot be sold as honey)
- Pennsylvania State University Extension, "Bees in Pennsylvania: Diversity, Ecology, and Importance," https://extension.psu.edu/bees-in-pennsylvania-diversity-ecology-and-importance (all bees forage for nectar as an energy source, and females of non-parasitic species for larvae; female non-parasitic bees forage for pollen primarily for protein for their young; specialists including Macropis on loosestrife with floral oils for nests and offspring, and squash bee Eucera pruinosa on Cucurbita; generalists including honey bees and Bombus impatiens; parasitic cuckoo bees invade host nests for the host to care for; Nomada visiting a flower for nectar)
- Pennsylvania State University Extension, "The Bumble Bee Lifestyle," https://extension.psu.edu/the-bumble-bee-lifestyle (bumble bee queens must forage for pollen and nectar before laying eggs, to activate ovaries; wax pots for nectar storage; first workers after about 3 to 4 weeks; summer nurse and foraging workers; larger bees carry more pollen, smaller bees do in colony tasks; new virgin queens fill up on pollen and nectar before diapause; diapause 6 to 9 months without feeding; pollen as main protein, lipids, and micronutrients, nectar as main carbohydrates, stored in the fat body)
- Pennsylvania State University Extension, "An Introduction to Queen Honey Bee Development," https://extension.psu.edu/an-introduction-to-queen-honey-bee-development/ (all larvae fed royal jelly exclusively for the first three days after hatching; royal jelly from hypopharyngeal glands, largest in nurse bees 6 to 12 days old; nurse bees consume large quantities of pollen and nectar to produce royal jelly; every larva receives about 10,000 feeding visits, about every 43 seconds; worker destined larvae transition to worker jelly, a mixture of royal jelly, pollen, and nectar, on the third day; queen destined larvae receive more royal jelly throughout development)
- Lancaster University, "Five things you did not know about bees and pollen," https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/blogs-archive/philip-donkersley/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-bees-and-pollen/ (nectar provides most sugars for foraging and flight energy; pollen protein content varies between plant species; honey bees convert nectar to honey for long term storage; pollen stored with a small amount of nectar ferments to bee bread; fermentation produces lactic acid protecting stored pollen from bacteria and fungi, with a rind on the surface)
- Entomological Society of America, Entomology Today, "Vulture bees: gut microbiomes," https://entomologytoday.org/2022/01/19/vulture-bees-gut-microbiomes/ (Trigona hypogea, Trigona necrophaga, and Trigona crassipes are the only three known bee species in the world that feed exclusively on carrion; study of their unique gut microbiomes reported in late 2021)
- Annual Reviews, "Nutritional Physiology and Ecology of Honey Bees," https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043423 (abstract consulted: honey bees feed on floral nectar and pollen stored as honey and bee bread; within hive bees convert stored pollen and honey into royal jelly; royal jelly and other glandular secretions are the primary food of growing larvae and of the queen)
