Gallery: Making Wax

Here are several photos of our honeybees busy secreting wax. Wax is created by young worker bees, 12 to 17 days old. These young bees gorge themselves with honey, and then, much like you after a big Thanksgiving dinner, go into a sleepy, digestive state while their bodies convert the honey in their stomachs into wax. The bees tend to clump together — holding hands — as pictured while their bodies are converting the honey’s carbohydrates into wax. It takes eight grams of honey to produce a single gram of wax.