How do bee's make wax? Is there some sort of oil in it?
Answer:
"Beeswax - Glands under the abdomen of bees secrete a wax, which they use to construct the honeycomb. The wax is recovered as a by-product when the honey is harvested and refined. It contains a high proportion of wax esters (35 to 80%). The hydrocarbon content is highly variable, and much may be "unnatural" as beekeepers may feed some to bees to improve the yield of honey." (Ref 1)
"Beeswax
Beeswax is the major component of honeycomb. It is secreted in tiny flakes from the underside of the abdomens of worker bees, and moulded into honeycomb.
Beeswax is soft to brittle, with a specific gravity of about 0.95 and a melting point of over 60°C, and consists of at least 284 different compounds, mainly a variety of long-chain alkanes, acids, esters, polyesters and hydroxy esters." (Ref 2)
Bottom line - Bees eat pollen and nectar and manufacture hydrocarbon-like substances. It's not really like oil (which is liquid). The molecules are longer carbon chains that you would find in oil, and the long chains and molecular structure with interconnections between chains gives the material a more rigid structure.
A chemical reaction between pollen and bee spit.
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