The Shaykh’s mention of the reason for the large number of narrations by Abu Hurayrah.

The Shaykh : The hadiths of Abu Hurayrah come close to five or six thousand, or perhaps slightly more or less. As for the hadiths of 'Abd Allah ibn 'Umar, they may reach one thousand or one thousand and five hundred, or something like that. In any case, they are less than half the hadiths of Abu Hurayrah. The reason, in brief, is his exertion and his contentment with the necessities of food, drink, and clothing. The second reason is the supplication of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) for him, and this is the strongest of the reasons for it. The third reason is that he used to collect hadiths from the Companions. This reason is actually very clear, because we find that among the four Imams, Imam Ahmad is the one with the most hadiths. Why? Because he traveled to the scholars of hadith in the various regions of the Islamic lands and others, and he collected from them what the others did not collect. So he, even though he was later than them, had more hadiths than they did.
So this hadith gives us the meaning of the well-known wisdom: "Whoever strives, finds" and "By the measure of your toil, you attain the heights". So we take from this hadith of Abu Hurayrah two things, and the first of them is related to the core of the subject, which is the contentment of the Companions with a little livelihood and their not turning to the enjoyment of this world, even if that enjoyment is permissible.
The other thing we take is that a person, through his exertion and specialization in a certain matter, excels in it and surpasses others, even if they are more advanced than him in knowledge and older than him in age.