How do they make their nests?

Back to the bees!

How do honeybees make their nests? Would you believe that they make all of the wax combs themselves? Where do they get all that wax from? They make it inside their own bodies and it comes out of their abdomens. The organs that make the wax are called wax glands. Here is a picture of a bee making wax.

See that white stuff coming out of her abdomen? A honeybee worker has 8 of these glands, as you can see- four on each side of the abdomen. They squeeze the wax out of their wax glands, then collect it with their mouths and mold like clay, adding it wherever it is needed in the beehive to make their hexagon-shaped cells.

Wild bees hang their combs wherever they can in the hollow tree or other hollow space that they have chosen for a nest. Beekeepers give their bees frames to make their combs in so that the beekeeper can easily move the combs around and gather the honey. Here is a picture of one of those frames with its base, or foundation. The foundation has a hexagon shape printed into it so that the bees will make nice, straight comb for the beekeepers.

Wax gland photo from Denver Beekeeper's Association.

Why are some cells darker than others?

When the comb is brand new, it is white to light yellow. When the bees make new comb we call it "drawing out the comb." Here is a freshly drawn comb.

The comb starts to get darker as it ages. Depending on what is stored in the comb, it will get darker faster. Honey comb doesn't get very dark because honey and nectar are almost clear and cannot color the comb very much. Cells in comb that are used for baby bees (eggs, larvae, and pupae), however, get very dark. That is because that honeybees, like moths, spin a cocoon when they pupate. This cocoon is made of silk strands that come from the mouth of the larva inside. You can't see the cocoon very well because of that wax cap the worker bees put over the cell when the larva when it starts to pupate. Even when you cut open a cell, it is very hard to see the cocoon because it is so thin and sticks to the wall of the cell like wallpaper. The cocoon is darker than the wax, and it makes the wax cells look darker. Once a bee has emerged from a cell, the cell can be re-used for a new larva, so the next larva will spin its cocoon inside the old cocoon of the last larva. The cocoon layers build up like a stack of paper until the cells look very dark indeed. Here is a cross-sectioned (sliced open) cell with an egg. See all the layers at the bottom? Those are old cocoons built up over years.

The pollen also colors the comb. Pollen is usually yellow, but can be brown, red, orange, white, and even purple.  These colors all get mixed up when the pollen is stored in the cells to make bee bread. The wax gets stained or colored by all the pollen and starts to look dark.


New comb photo from UNL extension.