Beeswax & Honey
While everyone knows that honey and beeswax are made by bees, most people are less certain exactly how or why. In fact, honey is necessary for making beeswax, which is necessary for storing honey.
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Making Honey
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To make honey, a bee sucks nectar from flower with its "tongue," called a proboscis, and stores it in a sack in its body called the honey stomach. An enzyme from the bee's body begins the process of changing the nectar to honey. Back at the hive, the nectar is stored in honeycomb cells and the house bees fan their wings to evaporate and thicken the nectar. Further enzymes prevent the honey from fermentation and bacteria and the filled cells are covered with an airtight beeswax cap.
Purpose
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Bees make honey as food for themselves and their offspring and to secrete wax for comb building.
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Wax Production
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Bees ingest the honey and their bodies convert it to wax. Only special glands of worker bees can secrete the wax. When the wax comes in contact with the air, it solidifies into irregularly oval flakes or scales. The bee chews the wax to soften it and molds it into the honeycomb structure.
Use
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Bees store surplus honey in the cells to ensure their year-round survival, especially during the winter months when there are no flowers. The cells are also used for raising the young.
Considerations
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A bee may have to visit between 50 and 150 flowers to fill its honey stomach. It takes about 8 lbs. of honey for the bee to produce 1 lb. of wax, for which the bee may have to travel about 150,000 miles.
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References
- Photo Credit two bees eating honey 10609 image by pablo from Fotolia.com
