Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Beeswax

Honeybees produce wax and use it to create clever constructions inside the hive, called comb. Let’s take a closer look at beeswax and how it is used by bees (and humans).

1) How do bees make wax?
All worker bees have glands for making wax on the ventral, or belly, sides of their abdomens. The hive needs to be a certain temperature, 91-97F (33-36C), in order for the bees to produce wax from these glands. The size of the glands depends on the age of the bee. Once a worker starts flying regularly, they produce less wax as the glands begin to atrophy. The wax comes off of these glands in scales that are .12” (3mm) across and .0039” (1mm) thick. New scales of wax are clear, and become opaque when the honeybees chew it and shape it. That is why freshly made honeycomb is pure white in color. It takes 1100 of these tiny, transparent scales to make a gram of wax.

The photo below shows a match stick on top for size comparison and three freshly made, transparent wax scales in the middle of the bottom row.
All the items in this picture are (from top to bottom, left to right): A match stick, three chunks of pollen, some propolis, and another small ball of pollen from a different flower source, a honeybee’s wing, three scales of new wax, and a varroa mite.

photo: Waugsberg

2) How do bees construct comb, what is it used for, and what features does it have?
Honeybees chew the wax the produce and use their mouths limbs, and antenna to shape it into hexagonal cells, or rooms. They begin construction on the roof of their hive and build each wax cell vertically, effectively creating their comb. Bees use their heads to measure how big the cell should be.
Bees use the wax combs they build to raise their young and store their foods, honey and pollen. When used to house bee babies, it is called brood comb. When used for food, it is called honeycomb. Each cell of the honeycomb is angled slightly upwards so that the honey will not run out. Comb darkens as it absorbs detritus and other impurities, brood comb gets the darkest. Honeybees also mix the wax with honey and secretions to make propolis, the substance they use to weatherproof the hive and glue things together.
If you look closely at honeybee comb, you can see that all the cells on one side of the sheet of comb are slightly offset from the cells on the other side. The cells are not perfectly aligned back-to-back. Yet they are still perfectly aligned with each other to take advantage of the hexagonal shape and brace, or strengthen each other. This reinforces the comb, and it is able to support many times its own weight in pounds of bees or stored foods.

This photo is of a comb constructed by the Red Dwarf honeybee from southern Asia, Apis florea. It shows clearly how the hexagonal cells are built slightly offset.

photo: Sean Hoyland

 
3) What do people use beeswax for?
Humans have a multitude of uses for beeswax. It is a common ingredient of food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Just a few of these examples would include using wax to encase cheese or make some kinds of candy. Lip balms and lotions are made with wax. The most obvious wax tool is the candle. The ancient Egyptians were recorded beekeepers and had many uses for beeswax. In the Middle Ages, beeswax was a valuable enough commodity to be used as currency, or money.
Wax was basically man’s first plastic. It has been used for modeling, gluing, binding, and sealing for thousands of years.

Bee Knowledgeable Questions: Beeswax

Honeybees produce wax and use it to create clever constructions inside the hive, called comb. Let’s take a closer look at beeswax and how it is used by bees (and humans).

1) How do bees make wax?

2) How do bees construct comb, what is it used for, and what features does it have?

3) What do people use beeswax for?

Have a wonderful holiday season and fantastic new year!! Be sure to check back in and compare facts!

Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Honeybee Gardening!

We know that bees and flowers are symbiotic. Almost any garden will attract and nourish honeybees. Does your school have a garden? Do you have a garden at home? This is the time of year to plan next year’s garden and prepare the soil for Spring planting!

Whether you already have a garden or are planning to have one, consider a Honeybee Garden. You can plan a whole garden to help your local native and honey bees thrive, or devote a part of your garden to plants that bees love. You can pick native plants and flowers that will thrive in your area and require very little water and maintenance.

1) What can you do now, in the winter, for your garden this spring?
Winter is for soil preparation and planning. Spread compost and till it into the soil often. Turning the soil aerates and helps keep weeds sparse. If you do not already compost all or part of your garbage, consider it. Compost provides an organic and well-balanced fertilizer that can be used all year.

After the fall harvest and while the earth recovers for spring planting, plan your garden. Which plants have you decided you’d like and where will they go?

2) Define xeriscaping.
Xeriscaping refers to landscaping while reducing or eliminating supplemental irrigation. "Xeri" comes from Greek meaning “dry”. Using native plants is and excellent way to xeriscape or xerigarden. Once established, native plants take very little to no water beyond what they get from the local weather.

3) What are some native plants to your area that will attract and feed honeybees? Can you find any interesting facts about some of those plants?
We are located in a chaparral plant community here at the Boojum Institute, in the mountains of southern California. Adjacent plant communities are coastal sage scrub and pinyon-juniper woodland. The Boojum Bees feast on several native plant species. White Sage and California Buckwheat are two of the main local suppliers of sustenance to our bee colonies.

White Sage, Salvia apiana, is also called grandfather sage and bee sage. The bees make an especially delightful honey from the nectar of this plant’s delicate flowers. This is one of the sacred plants to the indigenous people. They burn the leaves as a type of incense to purify the air. Tribal hunters rubbed the leaves on themselves to mask their own smell from animals. The leaves are anti-septic and anti-fungal among a long list of other properties.

photo: Robyn Young

photo: Robyn Young

 California Buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum, is also very popular for bees. The multi-flowered umbels provide a heavy load of nutrients for bees. They bloom from summer into late fall, their flower heads like white cotton balls in the bushes along the road. As the bloom ages it turns pink and finally to a rich, rusty red brown. It was used medicinally by indigenous people for headache, wound treatment, and heart problems. Bees make a rich, robust honey from Buckwheat that is especially nutrient dense.

photo: Stan Shebs

Bee Knowledgeable Questions: Honeybee Gardening!

We know that bees and flowers are symbiotic. Almost any garden will attract and nourish honeybees. Does your school have a garden? Do you have a garden at home? This is the time of year to plan next year’s garden and prepare the soil for Spring planting!

Whether you already have a garden or are planning to have one, consider a Honeybee Garden. You can plan a whole garden to help your local native and honey bees thrive, or devote a part of your garden to plants that bees love. You can pick native plants and flowers that will thrive in your area and require very little water and maintenance.

1) What can you do now, in the winter, for your garden this spring?

2) Define xeriscaping.

3) What are some native plants to your area that will attract and feed honeybees? Can you find any interesting facts about some of those plants?

Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Honeybee Adaptation

There are many varieties of adaptation in the animal kingdom. An adaptation is an evolutionary process by which a species develops traits that help better survive and fit the habitat or environment.

photo: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

The distinctive coloration of honeybees is an adaptation. The yellow and black stripes on a bees body helps make bees harder for predators to see. It is a camouflage when they are gathering nectar and pollen from flowers.

Bee stingers are also an adaptation. It is actually an organ in their body called an ovipositor. The ovipositor is used by insects to lay their eggs precisely where they want them. Honeybees adapted this organ to be sharp enough to penetrate an attacker’s flesh and venom sacs were developed to make the sting very powerful. This is another defensive adaptation.

The hair on a honeybee’s body is another adaptation. As a bee flies, the incredibly fast beating of their wings generates static electricity. The static builds up in their fur. When a bee lands on a flower to drink nectar, the flower’s fine, dust-like pollen cling’s to the bee’s fur due to the static charge. The bee can then use their feet to “comb” themselves, gathering the pollen and storing it on the pollen baskets on their back legs.

photo: Jon Sullivan

Did you come up with other honeybee adaptations? What were they?

Bee Knowledgeable Questions: Honeybee Adaptation

There are many varieties of adaptation in the animal kingdom. An adaptation is an evolutionary process by which a species develops traits that help better survive and fit the habitat or environment.

What kind of adaptations do you think the honeybee has developed? Do your research and try to come up with at least three honeybee adaptations.

Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Honeybees and Water

photo: Luc Viatour

Honeybees use water for a few different purposes. The most obvious use of water is for drinking, and bees also use water to dilute the honey they feed their young. Another use that honeybees have for water to cool the inside of the hive. They will place droplets of water all over inside the hive when the weather is hot. They fan their wings and circulate the air past the droplets of water. This cools the air as it passes by the droplets, creating a swamp cooler type effect inside the hive.

Honeybees will find the closest source of water to their hives that they can. They will often decide on a water source and use it exclusively, sometimes ignoring other sources. In hot weather, a healthy colony can use a quart of water a day! To gather that much water, over 800 bees each had to make 50 trips to the water source!

Guttation on a Strawberry leaf by Noah Elhardt

Bees will collect water from almost any possible source. This includes wet surfaces, standing puddles, damp earth, pools, drippy faucets, pet water dishes, and even the sides of swamp coolers. Bees get some water from the nectar they gather. Plants can help provide water to bees in ways other than just in the nectar of their flowers. Moisture collects on leaves and stems in tiny drops called dew, easily collected by bees. In some weather conditions, plants also exude watery liquid from inside. This is called guttation.

Water is a necessity to bees just as it is to every form of life on earth. Water can also be very dangerous these days. Pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals can drift into water supplies, especially ground water. Bees that collect water directly from chemically treated plants can be gathering highly concentrated doses of lethal poisons. Even if the dose of chemical isn’t enough to kill the individual bee, it can still have devastating effects. The bees carry tainted water back to the hive and share it among workers, weakening the immune system of the individuals that drink it. Contaminated water that may not kill a grown bee could certainly kill honeybee larva, destroying the colony.

This is yet another reason why it important to avoid the use of chemicals in your garden, on your lawn, or anywhere. The effect of chemical use on our environment is serious and far reaching.