By Anderson Heller, 7th Grader When someone mentions bees the first thing that comes to mind is probably the golden, sweet honey that bees make. The next is likely beeswax or honeycomb. Both of these substances, honey and beeswax, are fundamental to how bees build their communities, survive, and thrive. Wax is the building block of the classic hexagonal patterns found in hives which offer storage for both honey and larvae. Honey is made through a special process involving some key bee physiology. One of these distinctive features is the bees’ storage stomach called the honey stomach. When a bee visits a flower, it collects two things: nectar and pollen. Pollen is a source of protein and nutrients for bees and is fed to larvae. Nectar is the main ingredient for honey. When the worker bee collects the nectar, it is stored in the honey stomach where a special enzyme called invertase is added. Invertase changes sucrose into fructose and glucose while other enzymes help improve the taste. This is the beginning of honey. To make the nectar into honey, the nectar must be passed through several different bees, and with each passing the nectar changes slightly based on the enzymes of each subsequent bee. Once this process has been repeated enough times it is stored in the honeycomb where the design of the honeycomb and the constant buzzing of the bees’ wings causes water to evaporate out of the honey. This means that the water content drops and is turned into the liquid gold we all know and love, honey! But bees do not only make honey using their bodies, they also make wax. Wax is the building block of the hive; every single honeycomb cell is made of wax. Wax is made by a special gland in the abdomen of the bee which is then excreted through small pores and formed into scales of wax. When bees need to make wax, they huddle together to make the hive just the right temperature which is 33 Celsius. This temperature enables the wax glands to start producing. When bees make wax, they eat honey and like the process of making honey, special ingredients inside the bees’ body convert the honey into wax. A single worker bee makes eight scales of beeswax every 12 hours. One million scales of wax are needed to make a small hive, so it is a good thing that there are 20,000-80,000 worker bees in a hive. Though bee products are popular, not many people know how they are made. It is amazing to think that worker bees make the various products we enjoy such as honey, beeswax, and propolis using their hyper specialized body parts such as the wax glands and the honey stomach. Bees make wonderful things that benefit them and people all over the world.
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October 2023
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