Dissecting a Honeycomb: The Yummies Live Inside

Whenever the girls ask what's in a particular dish and I don't want to tell them--either I don't feel like reciting a list of eighteen spices, for instance, or I know that a revelation that the dreaded SUN-DRIED TOMATO or the horrible PEANUT BUTTER or the villainous GINGER or the monstrous PEPPER live inside the recipe will mean that I'm eating dinner alone tonight--I tell them that the dish contains "yummies," as in:

"Momma, what's in the pasta?"
"Hmmm...noodles, and tomato sauce, and garlic."
[Suspiciously eyeing what is, in fact, a sun-dried tomato]: "What else?"
"Oh...just yummies. Want a serving or a taste?"
"Serving, please!"

The only thing this has to do with our honeycomb dissection is that...know what lives inside the honeycomb? Um, bee spit and the occasional bee part and beeswax, etc. You know, yummies!

Here's our honeycomb piece, bought from Hunter's Honey Farm on our recent field trip:

As we learned on our tour, the hexagonal cells are made by the bees from their wax, are filled with honey by the bees, and then sealed by them with more wax.

You can cut it open for a cross-section, and to verify that, yes indeedy, there's sticky honey inside of there!

And of COURSE you can eat it!

Even if you're not too sure about the wax and the spit, etc.

After all, it's apparently MUCH tastier than a sun-dried tomato, sigh.