Last week, we learned how bee’s make honey. This week lets discuss how bees make honecombs to store honey! Watch to find out!! #STEMvee
Transcript: Remember how bees make honey? All those stomach enzymes digesting nectar and passing it on to the next bee. At their hive, they store the honey in the hexagonal holes known as honeycombs. But….how are these holes made?! These honeycombs are made from wax. Worker bees have special glands in their stomach that will secrete wax when the temperature is right. They will chew the wax so that it mixes with a little bit of honey and pollen, and comes beeswax! The process of producing wax takes a lot of energy and so bees need to eat a lot of honey. Some scientists guess that bees must eat 8 oz of honey, for every 1 oz of wax produced!! No wonder their colony is so big…it takes a village! Because making wax is a lot of work, it is important that the bees build a home that uses the least amount of wax possible.When you look at it from far away, they look like circles stacked upon each other, but when you look closer, these circles have a hexagon shape. If you think about a row upon row of circles, you might notice there are many gaps, and the bees would have to produce wax to fill it up…that is way too much work. Bees would be spending more time making wax than honey. Shapes with straight edges are easier to line up against each other and less wasted space. WOW! For thousands of years, bees have known something we didn’t, that hexagons are the most efficient shape. They use the least amount of material, has the most storage space…more than squares and triangles, and holds the most weight! Afterall, it needs to be strong enough to hold honey, bees, pollen, and larvae. However, the presence of hexagons is not unique to bees. Hexagons are found in many places in nature. Plants have hexagon shaped tissue called xylem to transport water, our bones have a hexagonal lattice matrix that allows for sturdiness yet lightweight. Scientists are still unsure exactly how these hexagon honeycombs are made. Do bees just KNOW how to make this 6 sided shape or do they start out in circles and the heat of the bee allows the wax to melt and the shape to be molded into a hexagon? Many scientists believe that the bees’ body heat will melt the wax and form the efficient stacked hexagon shape…hmmm I think I have found my new favorite shape!
