Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
abdomen. The wax appears as a clear liquid, cools and turns white, forming a small wax
scale or flake. The workers can produce this in very large quantities. I have seen bees
that had been robbing a honey-extraction plant and that were unable to get out and,
full of honey, formed clusters in the shed rafters, covering the floor below in wax scales.
In the hive, they often link together into chains and clusters between the combs, which
helps them to maintain a temperature of about 35° C (96° F) in order to produce wax.
After clustering for around 24 hours, the small wax scales are secreted.
Uses
Wax is the bees' basic house-building unit. It is often mixed with some propolis (see
below) for strength and, without it, a colony could not exist. It takes over 7 kg (15 lb)
of honey to produce 1 kg (2 lb) of wax, and so you can see that, if you take away the
beeswax at harvest time for sale as comb honey, the bees will need to use up a large
amount of honey to replace it. It becomes a matter of working out what will make the
most money for the beekeeper - selling honey alone and preserving the wax for a good
harvest the next year or a second harvest in year one, or selling more expensive comb
honey and letting the bees use up valuable honey in replacing it. It is estimated that a
standard Langstroth frame of comb can hold up to 3.8 kg (8¼ lb) of honey. The wax
necessary to hold this weighs only 100 g (3½ oz). Each wax scale produced by a honey-
bee weighs about 1 mg, which means that nearly one million are needed to make 1 kg (2
lb) of wax, and approximately 9 x 10
5
of these little scales are needed to make sufficient
wax for a normal bee colony. Work it out!
Composition
The composition of beeswax is complex, but it contains hydrocarbons, straight-chain
monohydric alcohols, acids, hydroxy acids, oils and other substances. Its specific gravity
is less than one, so it floats on water. It melts at 63-65° C (145-149
º
F) and solidifies
at 60-63° C (140-145
º
F), depending on its purity.
Wax is normally a by-product for beekeepers and, as a guide, for each 60 kg (130 lb)
of honey extracted from the hive, about 1 kg (2 lb) of beeswax is produced. This comes
from the cappings of the honeycomb, which are removed during the honey-extraction
process.
