Seven kilos of honey for one of wax

Every gram of wax on your comb cost the colony far more than a gram of honey. The classic figure, traced back to early twentieth-century experiments, puts the exchange at six to eight kilograms of honey burned to secrete one kilogram of wax.

Whitcomb's 1946 trial narrowed that further: 6.66 to 8.80 kilograms of honey per kilogram of wax produced, a span wide enough to remind you these are living insects, not machines, but tight enough to be useful.

Warmer weather makes the secretion cheaper, since bees spend less on keeping the wax-forming glands at working temperature; a cold, late flow taxes them harder for the same block of comb.