I never thought about it, but beeswax is kinda disgusting, basically ass-grease :P

How many bee jackets to make a tube of all natural chap stick?

But is a flake the same as a scale? Bad explanation.

Wikipedia has some actually useful units regarding it's production.

The new wax is initially clear as glass and colorless, becoming opaque after chewing and being introduced with pollen by the hive worker bees, becoming progressively yellower or browner by incorporation of pollen oils and propolis. The wax scales are about three millimetres across and 0.1 mm thick, and about 1100 are needed to make a gram of wax. Worker bees use the beeswax to build honeycomb cells. For the wax-making bees to secrete wax, the ambient temperature in the hive must be 33 to 36°C.

The book Beeswax Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products suggests one kilogram of beeswax is sufficient to store 22 kg of honey. Another study estimated that one kilogram of wax can store 24 to 30 kg of honey.

I knew the bees had to be secreting wax somehow. But I always imagined it to be some kind of secondary oral process. Instead they really use... specialized pores under the segments in their thorax?

Now I don't know which version grosses me out more.

Apparently a strong hive can have a colony of around 60,000 bees, so 500000/16 = 31250 bees, meaning it's possible, albeit unlikely because not all bees work the same, but it is almost theoretically possible for a big colony to make 2 lbs a day then.

Assuming flakes and scales are the same thing as well.

How did it never occur to me to ask where bee's wax comes from?

I don't know why, but this grosses me out so much.

It looks like one side of this bee is clogged

What’ll really bake your noodle later on is the wax is made from honey.

Eww