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Concept
Honeycomb
Summary
A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic cells built from wax by honey bees in their nests to contain their brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae) and stores of honey and pollen.
Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of honey to secrete of wax, and so beekeepers may return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey to improve honey outputs. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine, more specifically a 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. Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as comb honey, especially if the honey is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or as a sweetener.
Broodcomb becomes dark over time, due to empty cocoons and shed larval skins embedded in the cells, alongside being walked over constantly by other bees, resulting in what is referred to as a 'travel stain' by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a queen excluder) stays light-colored.
Numerous wasps, especially Polistinae and Vespinae, construct hexagonal prism-packed combs made of paper instead of wax; in some species (such as Brachygastra mellifica), honey is stored in the nest, thus technically forming a paper honeycomb. However, the term "honeycomb" is not often used for such structures.
The axes of honeycomb cells are always nearly horizontal, with the open end higher than the back end. The open end of a cell is typically referred to as the top of the cell, while the opposite end is called the bottom. The cells slope slightly upwards, between 9 and 14°, towards the open ends.
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