Page 59 - Kids and Bees Resource Booklet_SP_Neat

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 Winston, 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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