Dick Hess, age 11, of Rochester, N. Y. for his question:
How does a bee make beeswax?
The little worker bee is a daughter of the queen mother, Though this makes her a princess$ she has no time for idling. Her duties begin as soon as she hatches from her waxy cell and continue as long as she lives;, As her wings and bee hairs dry she watches her older sisters clean out her cell‑cradle to make it ready for a new egg, She is expected to learn this chore as she watches and even perhaps, to help.
For a few days her chores will keep her inside the hive. She will fetch and carry food to the babies. She learns the right food for each kind of baby bee, She learns proper respect for the queen bee and all the rules of the hive. And she makes beeswax,
This is part of learning to use her small body. Inside it she has' small factories for making various things, This is not so surprising when you realize your own body has little factories for growing hair and fingernails and producing perspiration, The bee has little factories for making honey from nectar, precious royal jelly from pollen and also beeswax.
Outdoors the worker bees are busy marketing. They stuff golden pollen into the spikey baskets on their back legs. They swallow sweet nectar and digest it to honey in their stomachs, They come home to unload. The pollen is tamped into storage cells. The honey is spit out into honey cells and for a few days is left to dry. Then it is sealed with a thin coat of pollen and wax.
The young worker goes with her sisters to gorge herself on this honey. Instead of getting fat, her body changes the extra food into wax. Under her abdomen is a double row of special wax‑making cells. The wax oozes out and dries in golden flakes shaped like flat leaves. This is beeswax.
The young worker removes each flake with care. First she loosens it with the spikes of a pollen basket, The flake sticks to the spikes and she lifts it in her two front legs. Now she uses her mandibles the tough jaws on either side‑of her face. Front legs ar mandibles go to work chewing and kneading. Soon the wax is ready for use.
The wax is used to make the eight‑sided cells of the combs, The little bee learns to make the irregular cells that fix the combs to the walls. She helps mold the wax into perfect six‑sided cells a fifth of an inch across where the worker bees are reared. She helps make a few larger drone cells and the cells with sloping sides to store honey. She may even help with the fancy fretwork that adorns the large cell of the queen bee.
We take this beeswax by melting down the emptied honeycombs. It is used in the making of certain polishes. Often it helps wax the wings of an airplane. And if you ever need a dental plate, chances are the dentist will take the impression of your gums with a gob of the wonderful wax manufactured by the little worker bees.