Beeswax

Definition

Workers roughly twelve to eighteen days old secrete wax as small flakes from glands on the underside of the abdomen, chew them and build them into comb. It is metabolically expensive — commonly cited at several kilograms of honey consumed per kilogram of wax produced — which is why bees reuse comb wherever they can and why a colony forced to rebuild loses a great deal of ground.

Honey records that discuss this

• Sunflower honeyStraw, beeswax and pollen, with a slightly waxy mouthfeel and a fresh, faintly herbal edge.
• Alfalfa honeyMild, clean and slightly grassy, with a beeswax note and very little else. A background honey, and good at being one.
• Miombo honeyRich and warm with a distinct woody, faintly smoky depth and a caramelised sweetness — the smoke comes partly from the harvest method and partly from the woodland itself.

Guide records that discuss this

• The other hive products: beeswax, propolis, royal jelly and bee pollenFour substances a colony makes or collects besides honey, each with a real biological function and a marketing story that runs well ahead of it. Here is what each one actually is.
• Honeycomb: what it is, and how to eat itComb honey is honey as it left the bees, still in the wax they built to hold it. You can eat the wax, it will not harm you, and there is a reasonable argument that it is the most honest product in the category.
• Honey traditions around the worldHoney turns up in ritual, medicine, marriage and law on every inhabited continent, and the patterns repeat in ways that are hard to explain by contact alone.
• Honey and bee symbolismBees have stood for industry, chastity, monarchy, resurrection, the soul and the perfect state — often simultaneously, and often on the strength of biology that turned out to be wrong.
• Beeswax: what it is and how bees make itA wax secreted from a bee's own abdomen at enormous metabolic cost, and for most of European history the more valuable half of the hive.

Question records that discuss this

• Can you eat honeycomb?Yes, wax and all. Beeswax is made of long-chain esters and fatty acids that human digestion does not break down, so it passes through inert — neither nutritious nor harmful. Chew and swallow it or chew and spit it out like gum; both are normal. The one restriction is the usual one: no honey in any form for children under twelve months.
• Is honey vegan?No. Honey is an animal product, the mainstream definitions of veganism exclude it, and virtually every vegan certification scheme rejects it along with beeswax, propolis and royal jelly. The ethical argument underneath that labelling answer is genuinely contested, including among vegans, but the labelling answer itself is not in dispute.
• How do bees make wax?Bees secrete it. Workers of about twelve to eighteen days old have eight wax glands on the underside of the abdomen that produce small transparent scales, which the bee then chews and moulds into comb. They do not collect it from anywhere — it is made from honey inside their own bodies.
• Is beeswax edible?Yes. Beeswax is edible, approved as a food additive, and largely indigestible — it passes through essentially unchanged. Eating honeycomb wax and all is normal and harmless; so is chewing it and spitting it out.