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Beeswax (Cera alba) is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into "scales" by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments 4 through 7 of worker bees, who discard it in or at the hive. The hive workers collect and use it for comb structural stability, to form cells for honey-storage and larval and pupal comfort and protection within the bee hive. Chemically, beeswax consists mainly of esters of fatty acids and various long-chain alcohols. Beeswax has applications in human food and flavoring, for example as a glazing agent. It is edible, in the sense of having similar negligible toxicity to plant waxes, and is approved for food use in the European Union under the E number E901. However, the wax monoesters in beeswax are poorly hydrolysed in the guts of humans and other mammals, so have insignificant nutritional value.〔(Beeswax absorption and toxicity ). Large amounts of such waxes in the diet pose theoretical toxicological problems for mammals.〕 Some birds, such as honeyguides, can digest beeswax. ==Production== The wax is formed by worker bees, which secrete it from eight wax-producing mirror glands on the inner sides of the sternites (the ventral shield or plate of each segment of the body) on abdominal segments 4 to 7. The sizes of these wax glands depend on the age of the worker, and after many daily flights, these glands begin to gradually atrophy. The new wax is initially glass-clear and colourless, becoming opaque after mastication and adulteration with pollen by the hive worker bees. Also, the wax becomes progressively more yellow or brown by incorporation of pollen oils and propolis. The wax scales are about across and thick, and about 1100 are required to make a gram of wax.〔Brown, R, H. (1981) ''Beeswax'' (2nd edition) Bee Books New and Old, Burrowbridge, Somerset UK. ISBN 0-905652-15-0〕 Honey bees use the beeswax to build honeycomb cells in which their young are raised with honey and pollen cells being capped for storage. For the wax-making bees to secrete wax, the ambient temperature in the hive must be 33 °C to 36 °C (91 °F to 97 °F). The amount of honey sacrificed to wax production is presently disputed. Current thinking suggests a correlation between the amount of honey used to produce its equivalent weight in wax and the amount of wax used to store its equivalent weight in honey. It is believed that by multiplying these figures together, that it should be possible to provide a figure for the amount of honey sacrificed to build storage comb and vice versa. According to Whitcomb's 1946 experiment, 6.66 to 8.80 pounds of honey yields 1 pound of wax. Les Crowder's study of five Langstroth hives, which re-use comb after honey extraction, and five top bar hives, which extract honey by crushing the comb, concluded 75 % to 80 % as much honey production and 600 % as much beeswax production in the top bar hives, which suggest 24 to 30 pounds of wax per 1 pound of honey.〔(Top-bar beekeeping in America ).〕 These studies only measured honey production versus comb production; they did not account fully for bees' feeding in a closed environment. Various sources specify anywhere from 20 to 400 pounds of honey stored per pound of wax. The book, ''Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products'', suggests 1 pound beeswax to store 22 pounds honey. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「beeswax」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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