The exquisite skill of bees in building nests is amazing. It uses the least building materials, occupies the smallest area, and builds a large and strong beehive. Honeycomb is a thin slice made of wax secreted by young worker bees, also called nest spleen. There are hexagonal columnar small eyes vertically distributed on it, which are called nests. Nest houses are places where bees lay eggs, breed insects, reproduce offspring and store honey, pollen and other foods. Every time bees breed in the nest, when their larvae are about to pupate, they will spin silk in the nest to make a thin cocoon to protect themselves. When the pupa comes out of the nest, this cocoon will stay in the nest. With the increase of the number of bee births, the cocoon coat of the nest room also increases, the size of the nest eye becomes smaller and smaller, and the color of the whole nest spleen becomes darker and darker, even brown. At this time, the individual bees are getting smaller and smaller. For bees, queen bees don't like to lay eggs in this nest. This kind of nest spleen is called old nest spleen by beekeepers. Because the old nest spleen is not conducive to bee reproduction, beekeepers take it out of the hive and replace it with a new nest base (wax sheet made of artificial beeswax, which is specially used for bee nesting) for bees to nest again. This old nest spleen extracted from beehive is also a bee product, which has pharmacological effects.
The content of this article comes from: Animal Welfare and Meat Production by China Agricultural Publishing House.