Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

The wax is formed by worker bees, which secrete it from eight wax-producing mirror glands on the inner sides of the sternites (the ventral shield or plate of each segment of the body) on abdominal segments 4 to 7. The sizes of these wax glands depend on the age of the worker, and after many daily flights, these glands gradually begin to atrophy.

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

The wax is formed by worker bees, which secrete it from eight wax-producing mirror glands on the inner sides of the sternites (the ventral shield or plate of each segment of the body) on abdominal segments 4 to 7. The sizes of these wax glands depend on the age of the worker, and after many daily flights, these glands gradually begin to atrophy.

An approximate chemical formula for beeswax is C15H31COOC30H61.

Beeswax

Beeswax is also an important ingredient in moustache wax and hair pomades, which make hair look sleek and shiny.

I wonder if moustache wax is used very much or was it used by old timey villains and is out of fashion amongst todays bad guys

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

I would imagine pollen contains lipids. I think bees also eat pollen.

Michael V said:

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

I would imagine pollen contains lipids. I think bees also eat pollen.

That was my guess. Thanks for that. Plant seeds are often high in fats, but I hadn’t heard if pollen was or not. It makes sense if it is, because it has to grow before reaching the seed capsule.

Bees produce much bigger and energy rich nests than any other type of insect. The wax is a high energy product and they are using it just as building material rather than food. That’s sort of like building houses out of timber rather than mud.

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

Animal bodies can also create fats without lipid input.

mollwollfumble said:

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

Animals also get their fats from eating sugars. That’s why sugars make you fat.

KJW said:

mollwollfumble said:

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

Animals also get their fats from eating sugars. That’s why sugars make you fat.

:) your posts always get a smile.

mollwollfumble said:

Bees produce much bigger and energy rich nests than any other type of insect. The wax is a high energy product and they are using it just as building material rather than food. That’s sort of like building houses out of timber rather than mud.

Is this because the wax is a by product of the honey production and is just a convenient way to hold the honey in, rather than making honey and then getting mud to hold it?

mollwollfumble said:

Michael V said:

mollwollfumble said:

Plants get their lipids from photosynthesis.

Animals get their fats from eating lipids.

But bees eat nectar, which doesn’t contain lipids, so where do bees get their wax from?

I would imagine pollen contains lipids. I think bees also eat pollen.

That was my guess. Thanks for that. Plant seeds are often high in fats, but I hadn’t heard if pollen was or not. It makes sense if it is, because it has to grow before reaching the seed capsule.

Bees produce much bigger and energy rich nests than any other type of insect. The wax is a high energy product and they are using it just as building material rather than food. That’s sort of like building houses out of timber rather than mud.

Pollen is high in fat. And bees eat that to get the fats to make their wax.

“During evolution, the male gametophyte of Angiosperms has been severely reduced to the pollen grain, consisting of a vegetative cell containing two sperm cells. This vegetative cell has to deliver the sperm cells from the stigma through the style to the ovule. It does so by producing a pollen tube and elongating it to many centimeters in length in some species, requiring vast amounts of fatty acid and membrane lipid synthesis. In order to optimize this polar tip growth, a unique lipid composition in the pollen has evolved. Pollen tubes produce extraplastidial galactolipids and store triacylglycerols in lipid droplets, probably needed as precursors of glycerolipids or for acyl editing. They also possess special sterol and sphingolipid moieties that might together form microdomains in the membranes.”

Honeybees specifically search out flowers with high lipid/fat content in their pollens. Native Australian plants are low in fat, 1.8% average in 31 endemic Australian species. “The pollens noted to be particularly attractive to foraging honey bees included Brassica napus (mean 7.1%), Sisymbrium officinale (mean 5.8%), Rapistrum rugosum (mean 6%) and Hypochoeris radicata (mean 7.2%).”

By specifically targetting plants with a high lipid content in their pollen, introduced honey bees eat enough plant fats to use the remainder to make wax nests that are usually much bigger and energy dense than those of native bees and wasps.

You can’t get fat from eating carbohydrates. I explain why in a Good Scientist cartoon that you haven’t seen yet. It’s because carbohydrates are high in oxygen and low in hydrogen, whereas fats are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen.

mollwollfumble said:

You can’t get fat from eating carbohydrates. I explain why in a Good Scientist cartoon that you haven’t seen yet. It’s because carbohydrates are high in oxygen and low in hydrogen, whereas fats are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen.

This is certainly not true. Glycolysis converts glucose to pyruvate. As this is a net oxidation, NADH is also produced. Under anaerobic conditions, pyruvate is reduced to lactate, which is at the same oxidation level as glucose. However, under aerobic conditions, pyruvate is oxidised and decarboxylated to acetyl-CoA, which may enter the citric acid cycle to be completely oxidised to carbon dioxide, or it may be used to synthesise fatty acids via a series of what are essentially Claisen condensation reactions followed by reduction with NADPH.

As for carbohydrates being high in oxygen, it should be noted that in the overall conversion of glucose to a fatty acid, only four of the six carbon atoms of glucose end up in fatty acid, the other two carbon atoms becoming carbon dioxide, which carry away oxygen. But the conversion of acetate to fatty acid still requires reduction (as well as energy). The overall reaction can be given as:

4 C₆H₁₂O₆ = C₁₆H₃₂O₂ + 8 CO₂ + 6 H₂O + 4 H⁺ + 4 e^–

Thus, the overall conversion of glucose to fatty acid is an oxidation.

Largest bee re discovered.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/world-s-largest-bee-vanished-decades-ago-now-scientists-have-spotted-it-again

KJW said:

mollwollfumble said:

You can’t get fat from eating carbohydrates. I explain why in a Good Scientist cartoon that you haven’t seen yet. It’s because carbohydrates are high in oxygen and low in hydrogen, whereas fats are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen.

This is certainly not true. Glycolysis converts glucose to pyruvate. As this is a net oxidation, NADH is also produced. Under anaerobic conditions, pyruvate is reduced to lactate, which is at the same oxidation level as glucose. However, under aerobic conditions, pyruvate is oxidised and decarboxylated to acetyl-CoA, which may enter the citric acid cycle to be completely oxidised to carbon dioxide, or it may be used to synthesise fatty acids via a series of what are essentially Claisen condensation reactions followed by reduction with NADPH.

As for carbohydrates being high in oxygen, it should be noted that in the overall conversion of glucose to a fatty acid, only four of the six carbon atoms of glucose end up in fatty acid, the other two carbon atoms becoming carbon dioxide, which carry away oxygen. But the conversion of acetate to fatty acid still requires reduction (as well as energy). The overall reaction can be given as:

4 C₆H₁₂O₆ = C₁₆H₃₂O₂ + 8 CO₂ + 6 H₂O + 4 H⁺ + 4 e^–

Thus, the overall conversion of glucose to fatty acid is an oxidation.

I was just going to say that.

Ian said:

KJW said:

mollwollfumble said:

You can’t get fat from eating carbohydrates. I explain why in a Good Scientist cartoon that you haven’t seen yet. It’s because carbohydrates are high in oxygen and low in hydrogen, whereas fats are low in oxygen and high in hydrogen.

This is certainly not true. Glycolysis converts glucose to pyruvate. As this is a net oxidation, NADH is also produced. Under anaerobic conditions, pyruvate is reduced to lactate, which is at the same oxidation level as glucose. However, under aerobic conditions, pyruvate is oxidised and decarboxylated to acetyl-CoA, which may enter the citric acid cycle to be completely oxidised to carbon dioxide, or it may be used to synthesise fatty acids via a series of what are essentially Claisen condensation reactions followed by reduction with NADPH.

As for carbohydrates being high in oxygen, it should be noted that in the overall conversion of glucose to a fatty acid, only four of the six carbon atoms of glucose end up in fatty acid, the other two carbon atoms becoming carbon dioxide, which carry away oxygen. But the conversion of acetate to fatty acid still requires reduction (as well as energy). The overall reaction can be given as:

4 C₆H₁₂O₆ = C₁₆H₃₂O₂ + 8 CO₂ + 6 H₂O + 4 H⁺ + 4 e^–

Thus, the overall conversion of glucose to fatty acid is an oxidation.

I was just going to say that.

Nods.