The word usually translated as locust probably referred to something entirely different from the grasshopper like insect. Many commentators think that it was the common carob pod. The carob pod is brown, flat and hard and about seven inches long and one inch wide. The small seeds inside gave the name "carat" to the weight measurement of gold and jewels. It grows on a low tree and, being wild and plentiful, the poor gathered it for food. The pod is very nutritious. People today, who cannot take cocoa products, sometimes substitute carob flour instead.

Honey ...
Neither was wild honey necessarily bee honey. The only explicit biblical reference to bee honey is in the story of Samson [Judges14:8]. The Hebrew word, davash, was more commonly used for any syrup or nectar exuded from fruit, and especially from the date. Carobs and dates were most likely John's staple diet.

One cloak - many uses ...
Though not worn in hot weather, cloaks were used as bed coverings even in summer in desert areas and on higher ground where the nights are cold. Many poor people, therefore, needed them all year round. This is why the Torah forbids keeping a pledged cloak overnight, otherwise, "what would a poor person have to sleep in?" [Exodus 22: 26,27 Good News].

Living in the Judaean desert, as he did, where the days were hot but the nights decidedly cold, John the Baptist's cloak was important to him. The fact that it was made of camel hair also tells us that he had a warm covering whenever he had occasion to sleep out in the open.