Ask A Beekeeper

A friend of mine, Lili, asked me about beeswax. She was curious about what color wax is when the bees first make it and if the color was different in the wild.

Excellent questions - Bees make wax from wax glands (mirror glands) on their abdomens. The wax is a translucent white when it is first excreted and as it ages it changes color.

What changes the color is the footprints of the bees. The more bees that walk on the wax the darker it is. Wax that is used to cap honey isn't walked on much so there are few footprints and the wax remains creamy colored.

Wax used to make cells were brood is located gets lots of traffic and gets dirty faster.

You can see where the brood or babes were located on this old frame - the cells are dark, almost black. The honey was stored in the corner so the wax is much lighter in color. 

The wax is a wild colony is the same - lighter where the honey is stored and darker where the bees have the babies. 

If you have a question, comment below or find me at the Brookline, NH 4th of July Parade!

Honey harvesting

I am always amazed at the difference between summer and fall honey. This is all we have left of our summer honey on the right and the darker, bolder fall honey is on the left. It was a slim harvest for us. The bees in one hive just didn't produce much at all this year while the other was nicely productive.

My husband loves to help with harvest even when that means he's on cleaning duty. Here he is cleaning out a box that will go into storage this winter. 

Our productive hive really liked making wax. Normally we keep enough frames in the hives for the bees to fill with honey, but apparently I left an open spot. It wasn't empty for that long. The bees made a frame to fill the space. These bees are quite dark and that is generally true of all the bees in this hive. Some of the daughter workers have virtually no yellow on them anywhere. This is in contrast with our other hive where this fall's new bees are very golden in color.

Typically beekeepers assume that darker bees are more temperamental. In this case my experience belies that notion. These bees are lovely to work yet they also produce good amounts of honey.