Wax Production

Composition

Wax comprises a complicated mix of chemicals: monohydric alcohols and fatty acids constitute about 30% each. Fresh wax is usually white but can be tinged yellow by pollen pigments.

photo: Milan Wiecx

Wax production

Wax-secreting bees are usually 14 to 18 days old. They work at a comparatively high temperature (35 degrees C), making wax production easier for large colonies. Generating heat may cause the bees to huddle together so that when we displace a frame they form festoons like daisy chains. This may be a cause of festooning, no one knows; there are several other theories. Festooning is rare when using plastic frames. I’ve barely ever seen it.

To make wax, they gorge themselves with honey and require 5.5 kg of sugar (7 kg of honey) to create 1 kg of wax, so about 4 kg per box of frames. Comb production is inhibited in queenless colonies.

Wax secretion

The wax is secreted as a liquid in glands two on each side of the ventral exoskeleton, passed to the mirror plates and then on to the pockets from where it emerges as a white flake. The bees use their feet to move each scale to their mouth to chew it. The walls of new wax cells are 0.06 mm thick, so the wax scale has to be carefully positioned.