Food Conversion Ratios in the Production of Beeswax

Abstract

In the days when the great naturalists believed wax to be the product of flowers gathered by bees during foraging, the swineherd and beeman knew, as did his lord or abbot, what sort of ratio of honey to wax could be harvested after the skeps were taken off the sulphur pit (Ransome 1937; Galton 1971; Vernon 1979). Even in the year that Huber (1814) published his observations on bees, we find little in contemporary works other than yield figures. John Keys (1814) reported that a 2-year-old colony with a nest volume of three pecks would yield 25 pounds of honey and not more than 2 of wax.