How Do Honeybees Make Beeswax?

Honeybees use a group of 8 special glands on their abdomen, called wax glands, to excrete a fatty substance which then hardens when exposed to air, forming wax scales.  Bees then chew these almost clear-white scales to soften them and form them into honeycomb cells.  

Take a close look at the two bees hanging upside down on the entrance excluder.  See those white flakes?  Those are freshly excreted wax scales that will soon be chewed to be softened and formed into comb. 

Wax production is critical to the survival of your colony.  Bees use the wax to form comb, which they then use to rear brood in, store pollen, store and dry honey, etc.  Without wax bees just simply couldn't reproduce and be a viable colony.  Honeybees have many different jobs as they get older and as their bodies develop.  The bulk of the beeswax is made by bees 6-12 days old and once they get older their wax glands slow production way down and eventually stop producing wax.  This is one of the many reasons why it's important to have a good distribution of ages of bees in your colony, it's really the young ones that produce the wax.  

It takes a lot of resources to make beeswax, about 6-8lbs of honey is used to make one pound of wax.  Whenever your bees are drawing comb, you want to be feeding them so it is essential to supplement what natural forage may be there for them with sugar syrup.  The extra food resources will help ensure they have enough resources not just to survive on but to make wax.  

Wax takes a lot of resources for the bees to make, and is pretty expensive to purchase.  Pure beeswax retails for about $10/lb, so we urge you to save any wax you scrape as you are doing hive inspections, don't throw it away!