Welcome to You Ask Andy

Doris Fowler age 11, of Detroit, Mich

How do bees make wax for honeycombs?

Honeycombs are made by little princesses. Every worker bee is a princess., for her mother is the one and only queen bee of the hive. The busy worker bee is a kind of spinster aunt. She lays no eggs and has no babies of her own. But her duties are endless. They include building and care of the hive, feeding and care of her infant sisters and brothers, attending and care of her royal majesty, the queen mother.

A few little workers specialize in their duties. But most of them can take over a variety of chores. The busy princesses are smaller than the queen or the drones, But they have the biggest heads in the family, Their bodies are also fitted as tools and factories to do their various chores:

They have pollen combs on their spindly legs. They have spikey pollen baskets for toting home the groceries. They have tough chewing jaws called mandibles. They have special stomachs for turning nectar into honey and round, sturdy foreheads for tamping pollen into the storage cells. And each worker bee has special glands for turning honey into building wax.

The busy princesses seem to know just when a repair job or a new rack of combs is needed in the hive. A group of them get busy and hang by their little feet from the cells stored with honey. They gorge and gorge and gorge themselves. Certain juices inside turn this honey into wax. It soon begins to ooze from a double row of wax glands on the underside of each little builder.

The wax sets in small, flakey leaves. Each busy bee knows just what to do with it. She stands on the middle pair of her legs, firmly propped with one hind leg. The other hind leg and the front pair of legs are needed to remove the waxy scales. She uses the pollen combs on one back leg to pry  the wax loose. She uses the two front leg to carry the flakes of wax to her chomping mandibles.  ';;

The wax is thoroughly chewed and kneaded into a soft wad, The bee then takes it to where it is needed and presses it into place. And she knows just. ,the right place to put it and exactly what kind of cell to make of it.

Almost all the cells are six‑sided boxes neatly fitted together, A few irregular cells are made to fix the combs to the hive walls. Cells for the drone babies are a quarter of an inch across, Baby queen cells are bigger.

Baby worker cells Ere one fifth of an inch across, Honey cells are about the same size as drone cells. But the smart little builders usually make the honey cells with slightly sloping sides, That way it is easier to get out the honey when needed.

The raw material for making the wax for the honeycomb comes originally from flowers, It begins as the sweet, syrupy nectar that the bees suck up from the throats of blossoms. Only a little worker bee can make that nectar into honey and only she can turn the honey into wax,. Her body is the tiny workshop in which the jobs are done. Digestive juices turn nectar into honey Special glands turn the honey into wax. Most amazing of all is how the little princess knows exactly what to do with the honey and the wax.

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