[rolftonbees]

I just pulled some frames from my hives. I tool a dark frame with dark from one and two shallow frames with very light yellow clearish honey. I noticed that the wax on these seemed to vary in color with the color of the honey. I chewed a mouthful of comb from each and the wax from the light was almost white in color while the brown honey had a deeper amber colored wax.

Does the nectar stain the wax, or is different because the bees are eating different stuff at those times , ie pollen, nectar, honey?

 

[Honey-4-All]

Yes. One can also differentiate the source of the nectar by smelling the wax ........with a little practice. The bees secrete the wax and it is susceptible to the "infection" of the hosts from which it was derived. Just like you and I secrete fluids that give off scents that are particular to what we consume so it is with the bees.

 

[Michael Bush]

Brown comb is almost always due to cocoons. Different colors of yellow or orange are often due to different pollen getting tracked onto the comb.

 

[peterloringborst]

Does the nectar stain the wax, or is different because the bees are eating different stuff at those times , ie pollen, nectar, honey?

I worked for many years at a candle factory that bought beeswax from all over. It is a plain fact that different types of nectar produce different colored wax. I am not referring to propolis or cocoon staining, but pure capping wax. Sweet clover and eucalyptus capping wax is as yellow as egg yolk. Cotton wax is white.

We used to filter the wax using sophisticated filtration. Propolis staining can be removed but you can't turn yellow wax white without bleach, which wrecks the wax. What the factory did was to reserve the white wax for colors like blue where even a trace of a yellow hue would change the color.

Yellow wax can be easily dyed colors with yellow in them, such as green, orange, brown, etc. A little yellow can be masked by red, but it ruins blue or white. They sold 31 colors of candles. I personally prefer uncolored beeswax

 

[rolftonbees]

What I suspect is clover honey has wax that is quite yellow, but not amber. I suppose if you buy sorry eggs in the grocery store you might think it is the color of a hard boiled yolk. I have free range chickens and my yolks are quite dark orange/red/amber.