Desert nectar and insect prey arrive in pulses separated by long dry gaps, and ants cannot build wax comb. Honeypot colonies solve storage biologically. Certain callow workers are fed continuously by foragers until the abdomen distends enormously, with the sclerites of the gaster separated by stretched membrane. These repletes climb to a chamber ceiling, grip with their legs, and stay there.
A replete cannot walk if she falls, and depends on nestmates. When a nestmate solicits by stroking her antennae, she regurgitates a droplet. The stores carry the colony through periods when nothing is foraging, and the same individuals can be drained and refilled.
The habit has appeared several times independently, in Myrmecocystus in North America, Camponotus inflatus in Australia and members of Plagiolepis and other genera elsewhere, which makes it a clear case of convergence rather than shared ancestry. Repletes have long been dug and eaten by Indigenous peoples in both Australia and North America, and their contents are chiefly water and sugars rather than honey in the beekeeping sense.