How did it never occur to me to ask where bee's wax comes from?
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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I mean, it’s right there in the name: beeswax, its own word.
I don't know what I was expecting exactly but it wasn't little wax scales coming from their abdomen
I always kind of hoped they pooped the wax out like spider's silk.
I assumed it was like cream separating from milk, only wax from honey, but to be fair I have never really thought about it much
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Well it's not like it's called beeswaxoutoftheiryuckysegmentedbody so we still have some room for imagination duh
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I don't know why, but this grosses me out so much.
Yeah it looks really disgusting, like it's shitting soft teeth
oi you didn't need to put that image out there in the world
you could have just kept that to yourself
Nobody needed to share that picture of bees making wax, either. 😩 We've all had our share of trauma from this post.
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What a terrible day to know how to read.
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I knew the bees had to be secreting wax somehow. But I always imagined it to be some kind of secondary oral process. Instead they really use... specialized pores under the segments in their thorax?
Now I don't know which version grosses me out more.
It's not like you ain't got glands
Ey gril, can I get a peak at them glands?
~I prefer adrenal by thyroid also works in a pinch.~
Definitely the latter, for me; something about segmented holes just grosses the absolute Hell out of me.
I guess you can say it's a small scale operation
Wikipedia has some actually useful units regarding it's production.
The new wax is initially clear as glass and colorless, becoming opaque after chewing and being introduced with pollen by the hive worker bees, becoming progressively yellower or browner by incorporation of pollen oils and propolis. The wax scales are about three millimetres across and 0.1 mm thick, and about 1100 are needed to make a gram of wax. Worker bees use the beeswax to build honeycomb cells. For the wax-making bees to secrete wax, the ambient temperature in the hive must be 33 to 36°C.
The book Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products suggests one kilogram of beeswax is sufficient to store 22 kg of honey. Another study estimated that one kilogram of wax can store 24 to 30 kg of honey.
What’ll really bake your noodle later on is the wax is made from honey.
I mean, the whole bee is, if you think about it
If you want to make a bee from scratch, you must first invent the universe
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Whoa hey now, you're not going to get me to think that easily
Mostly pollen actually. The honey is just the fuel.
Sort of like how the spit in your mouth, the tears in your eyes, the snot in your nose, etc is primarily made of filtered blood.
I don't know how I feel about this new revelation
Evolution does not create from nothing, it repurposes and modifies what's on hand.
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Hey man, let them live their lives. Mind your own bees wax... It's not your wax, it's the bees wax.
Apparently a strong hive can have a colony of around 60,000 bees, so 500000/16 = 31250 bees, meaning it's possible, albeit unlikely because not all bees work the same, but it is almost theoretically possible for a big colony to make 2 lbs a day then.
Assuming flakes and scales are the same thing as well.
He should use Head & Shoulders, will clear that right up.
It looks like one side of this bee is clogged
But is a flake the same as a scale? Bad explanation.
If you spread that stuff on wood or leather, it'll last forever.
TIL beeswax is pretty cheap. I typically use shellac on stuff that is indoor and low wear, Looks like beeswax is cheaper and about as easy to apply.
I never thought about it, but beeswax is kinda disgusting, basically ass-grease :P
And honey is more or less vomit if you want to think about like that.
Then again, if you do, remember that your cafe latte is also just boob fat and protein with some bean juice.
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How many bee jackets to make a tube of all natural chap stick?
Gross, but also neat
Weird bee teeth, tooth fairy origins?
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