Wax Scale
Lexikon
Wax scales are the small, colorless and translucent flakes of wax that a worker bee exudes on the underside of her abdomen.
Wax scales are the small, colorless and translucent flakes of wax that a worker bee exudes on the underside of her abdomen. They form on four pairs of wax glands, whose smooth surfaces are called wax mirrors, and each weighs less than one milligram.
The bee removes the scale from the wax pocket with her legs, brings it to her mouthparts and kneads it there with secretion from the mandibular glands until it is soft. Only this makes the wax pliable. It is used for building new comb, for repairs and for capping cells.
The wax glands work mainly in young bees, with a peak roughly between the twelfth and eighteenth day of life. When needed, for example after swarming or in spring, older bees can also resume building.
Building is expensive. For one kilogram of wax the colony consumes a multiple of that in honey; institute estimates range from several kilograms to over ten kilograms. Building also requires warmth: builder bees form chains and maintain a temperature of about 30 to 40 degrees while doing so.