Honey bees are one of the most hardworking insects, and the honey they produce has unique healing properties. It has been widely used in cosmetology, traditional medicine, and its beneficial properties are confirmed by official science. But honey is far from the only product of the vital activity of bees. One of the most interesting is the honeycomb.
Bee house
What is a honeycomb? This is the colloquial designation of the cell. In bees, they are hexagonal and symmetrical. Wax buildings of melliferous plants serve as an excellent storehouse for honey. Young animals are also grown in them, and the honeycombs also serve as a home for their creators. The rationality of using free space in a bee building can be envied by any construction company. Each honeycomb wall is also one of the walls of neighboring cells. In beekeeping, special thin wax sheets are used to help bees, on which hexagonal bottoms, consisting of three rhombuses, are pressed. It is this design that becomes the basis for future structures made of wax. These sheets are called waxes, they are attached to rectangular wooden frames, which are specially installed in hives. On one wax there are a lot of small bottoms, hence the name because the word "honeycomb" comes from "one hundred." Many people breeding bees have seen the work of insects on wax, and they understand what a honeycomb is and how it is built.
Where does the wax come from?
In the wild, bees do an excellent job building hives without human intervention. The wax used for the construction of honeycombs is independently produced by these wonderful insects, but only young and with sufficient, enhanced consumption of fresh flower nectar and pollen. In a soft state, the bee building material is very malleable and can be easily given any shape that will remain after solidification. Strength and durability are inherent in this material, it also has high hygiene and resistance to various microorganisms and the oxidizing effect of oxygen.
When do bees start making honeycombs?
During the spring awakening of nature, bees begin their construction work. With the advent of the first flowers, the insect has the opportunity to collect nectar and pollen. With a sufficient amount of these substances in the body of the bee, special wax glands begin to work, from which material is released for future honeycombs. First, the cells damaged during the winter are corrected, and only then the workers begin to create new ones, attaching them to the already ready ones.
Bee honeycomb is different in color. At first it is light, almost white, with a light cream tint. In such a honeycomb, the wax content is close to 100%. They are the most useful and clean. If honey was already stored in the honeycombs or young bees were hatched, the material darkens and its color becomes yellow, brown and even almost black. The darker the honeycomb, the greater the content of all kinds of impurities in it and the less wax itself.
Honeycombs and honey
What is a honeycomb, every beekeeper knows, and at the beginning of the active period of the bees' life, breeders try to increase the economy. Bee colonies are taken away from noisy cities to flower meadows and fresh waxes are added to the hives, because insect workers love the expanse. The natural nest of wild bees most often contains eight hundred, they are parallel and located vertically at exactly the same distance from each other - one and a quarter centimeters. The distance between the honeycombs is called "bee streets" not by chance - insects move along them in a certain order.
The structure of the nest in bees is very rational. At the top there is a storage for honey, below - honeycombs with growing bee offspring, where there is very good access to fresh air, and at the very bottom is a kind of industrial plant. In the lower honeycombs, the bees carry nectar, which is then dried, enriched with enzymes and processed into honey, after which the finished product is transferred to the upper warehouse. The result is a delicious and fragrant honeycomb.
What is a drone or uterine honeycomb? In the hive, in addition to honey, there are also special cells in which drones are grown and live. Their task is to fertilize the uterus. And there are separate uterine honeycombs in which the bee queen grows . The creation of each type of honeycomb is a unique and amazing process.