A honeycomb is built by bees in their nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about 8.4 pounds (3.8 kg) of honey to secrete 1 pound (0.45 kg) of wax, so it makes economic sense to return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey, commonly called "pulling honey" or "robbing the bees" by beekeepers.The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine - the honey extractor. If the honeycomb is too worn out, the wax can be reused in a number of ways, including making sheets of comb foundation with hexagonal pattern. Such foundation sheets allow the bees to build the comb with less effort, and the hexagonal pattern of worker-sized cell bases discourages the bees from building the larger drone cells.
Wikipedia, 2011. Honeycomb [online] [viewed 15 October 2011]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb
Bee. [digital image] [viewed 15 October 2011]. Available from: http://www.pdphoto.org/jons/pictures4/bee_6_bg_042404.jpg
The bees begin to build the comb from the top of each section. When a cell is filled with honey, the bees seal it with wax.
Wikipedia, 2011. Honeycomb [online] [viewed 15 October 2011]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb
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