Page 47 - kids ebook

The honey bee hive has fascinated scientists for centuries.

“In the 100s BC, the mathematician Zenodorus of Sicily proved that, for a given circumference, a hexagon has a
greater area than a square or an equilateral triangle. Around 500 AD Pappus quoted Zendourus’ deduction, and

commented that bees wisely chose to build hexagonal cell because these would hold more honey for the same
amount of wax that either of the other possible shapes.”
-Eva Crane, “The World History or Beekeeping and Honey Hunting”

Historically, people thought that bees collected wax from flowers. This could have been because of the waxy

white color of olive flower pollen in Greece. Also, until the late 1700s, people believed that bees carried the wax
in six “pockets” underneath their bellies. We now know that those “pockets” are “glands” that honey bees secrete
their wax out of.

So, what exactly is wax?! It’s actually a compound of about 300 different components the bees make with their

bodies, mostly hydrogen, carbon, and acids. Young honey bees produce wax from their wax glands when they are
about 5-15 days old. The wax comes out of the glands in tiny thin sheets that these bees mold into hexagonal

combs with their mandibles.

To be able to make lots and lots of these sheets, the bees have to make lots and lots of honey! Author, Mark Win-

ston, states in his book, “The Biology of the Honey Bee,” that bees (working together) will have to eat 18.5 pounds
of honey to make 991,000 wax scales, which makes about 2.2 pounds of wax! Do you think you could eat 18.5

pounds of honey?! What is the ratio of honey eaten to wax produced? What about the ratio of wax scales to
pounds of wax?

As mentioned, bees use the wax hexagon combs, or cells, to store honey, but they also use the wax cells to store
pollen they collect from flowers. The third bee use of wax cells is to raise their brood. The queen bee will lay an

egg in the bottom of the cell, and it will grow to an adult in that cell!

Is beeswax edible? Yes! But our bodies won’t digest it, so it has no nutritional value to people.

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