It’s amazing to discover that worker honey bees around 6 to 12 days old produce their wax scales out of four pair of wax glands located between the inter-segmental membranes
of their abdomen; sometimes this thin and clear scales can be seen with the naked eye. When needed the workers chew the scale mixing it with saliva creating what it’s known to us as
beeswax.
Bees use the wax as a building material for their honeycomb which is hexagon shaped cylinders that fit naturally side-by-side. The smallest possible amount of wax is used to
contain the highest volume of honey. Along with royal jelly and venom, beeswax is manufactured by honeybees themselves while honey, propolis and pollen are botanical in origin and are collected
and processed by the bees.
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