Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In an unmanaged colony, barring injury or disease, a typical queen will remain pro-
ductive for several growing seasons. As she ages, her sperm supply is continuously re-
duced, and her ability to produce all of the necessary pheromones for colony unity di-
minishes.
There comes a time when the workers in a colony are able to detect that the appro-
priate pheromone level is no longer sustained. This situation happens for two distinct
reasons—overcrowding and supersedure—which in turn elicit two very distinct behavi-
ors in the colony.
Making Wax
By the time a worker is about twelve days old, her wax glands have matured. These
four pairs of glands are on the underside of her abdomen. Wax is squeezed out of
the glands as a clear liquid. It cools rapidly and turns white. The worker uses her
legs to remove the wax, and then manipulates it with her mandibles to build the
hive's architecture. Pure beeswax is used to cap filled honey cells or to build new
comb for storage. New beeswax is mixed with old beeswax and a bit of propolis,
for strength, when covering brood cells and for use in building bridge comb.
When bees build new comb on a sheet of beeswax or beeswax-covered plastic found-
ation, they are said to be “drawing out” the comb. That is because they use the
small amount of beeswax available to start the hexagonal cells, and then add to
this foundation new wax that they produce in their wax glands. The result is a
frame that looks like this, with all-white wax cells.
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