Do you know why bees make honey? Honeybees spend the winters as a colony unlike wasps and bumblebees. And this colony does not hibernate but stays active and clusters together to stay warm. This requires a lot of food to be stored from the summer before. Although a hive only needs 20-30 lb of honey to survive an average winter, the bees are capable, if given the space, of collecting much more. The type of honey made by the bees depends on the type of foliage and flowers available to them.