How do bees make wax?

How it happens

1. 1EatingA wax-producing worker consumes large quantities of honey. Producing wax is metabolically expensive.
2. 2SecretionEight glands on the underside of the abdomen secrete liquid wax that hardens into small transparent scales, each about 3 mm across and weighing under a milligram.
3. 3CollectionThe bee passes the scale forward with her legs to her mandibles.
4. 4ChewingShe works the scale with her jaws, mixing in secretions that make it pliable and change its colour from transparent to white.
5. 5BuildingThe softened wax is added to the comb. Bees form festoons — chains hanging from each other — while building, and the temperature within the cluster keeps the wax workable.

What it costs

The frequently quoted figure is that bees consume in the region of six to eight kilograms of honey to produce one kilogram of wax. Estimates vary and the order of magnitude is not in dispute: wax is expensive, which is why bees reuse comb for years and why giving a colony drawn comb rather than foundation is a real head start.

The hexagon question

Bees build cells that are circular when first formed and become hexagonal. There is longstanding debate about how much of the hexagon arises from deliberate construction and how much from the physics of soft wax cylinders packing together and being warmed by the bees, and evidence supports a contribution from both.

Either way the result is efficient: the hexagon is the shape that encloses the most area for the least perimeter among shapes that tile a plane, which means the least wax for the most storage.

What wax is used for

• Comb — the structural material of the entire nest, used for brood and for storage.
• Cappings — sealing ripened honey and pupating brood.
• By people: candles, cosmetics, polish, food coating, and historically as a trade good more valuable than the honey.
• Beeswax was the medieval church's candle material, which is why wax was frequently the reason a colony was kept at all.