![]() When the water content of the nectar has reached the right point, bees will cap the honey. ![]() Bees help this process along by fanning their wings over the open cells, thus passing air over the nectar. This allows the water content of the nectar to be reduced. ![]() First, nectar foraged from flowers will be placed in cells and left uncapped. or more of honey, which means a lot of comb is necessary to store that honey.īees use cells to create honey in two phases. This depends on many factors, such as the temperatures in the depth of winter. They are, therefore, reliant on the honey resources they have built up within the hive, as they form the "winter cluster". During the cold months, bees are unable to venture away from the hive to gather nectar and pollen. Honey is an essential resource for the bee, particularly essential if they are to survive the winter months. But while bees deliver that sweet treat to us, they obviously don't do it for our benefit! We do, of course, take indirect advantage of that eventually around the breakfast table. The most obvious and well-known reason bees build comb is as a place to create and store honey. Before we look at why bees choose this approach, let's first consider the purposes for which they use this comb. Their choice of wax-based, hexagonal cells is a simple approach but one that affords them many benefits. Nectar and Honeyīees need a place in which to establish their home, both in nature and in our hives. That comb is used for many essential purposes by bees. Repeated tens of thousands of time, these cells form the comb in a beehive. This adjusts the malleability of the wax, making it more suitable as a building material from which each individual cell is built. Holding the scale in place, she then mixes it with saliva by chewing with her mandibles. When a worker creates comb, she scrapes a wax scale from her abdomen using the spines on her pollen basket and passes them to her front legs. These glands produce small, flat wax "scales" up to 3 mm long and 0.5 mm deep. Worker bees have 8 pairs of wax glands under their abdomen. But how do bees produce the wax they need to make cells? The Making of Beeswaxīeeswax, the material used to make honeycomb, is a truly extraordinary material with some fascinating properties. Let's look at the secrets and purposes of honeycomb in beehives. Bees have discovered a way to build their home that serves them incredibly well. This pattern hasn't occurred by accident. The concise and orderly pattern of comb is a symbol for structure, order, utility and strength - and with good reason. Each individual cell has a story to tell, through the myriad ways in which it can be used by bees. We find the hexagonal cells of honeycomb around us in many ways, but as beekeepers we become intimately familiar with them through our beehives. While it originates in nature, it is such a successful design that many manufactured products mimic its shape. One of the more aesthetically pleasing sights in nature is the structure constructed by bees to form the basis of their home - honeycomb.
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