> what about heat/infra red and the difference between black and white in terms of heat radiation and absorption and the ability of bees to sense heat.
Wax does not have much "thermal mass" when it stay a "solid". If you heat it up to above the melting point, then it makes a great "phase-change" material, absorbing and releasing heat efficiently. The lunar rovers from the Apollo moon landings had a cooling system based upon heating up paraffin (sorry, not beeswax), and cooling it off via radiation fins. (The moon tends to stay +250 F in the sun and -300 F in the shade.)
The "black body radiation" from the old black comb is going to be minimal, as the combs would be capped with new wax for honey cells, or far less-black recycled wax for brood cells. So the surfaces that would face outward would not be the dark wax. All the dark wax will transfer heat to the cell contents, to a certain extent, but the combs are going to be close enough to ambient temp that a temperature probe imbedded in the wax will give about the same readings as one in the open air between frames. All that air moving through the hive and bees using body heat to keep brood warm means that the temperature is what the bees make it, not what the materials would be in a static situation.
Brood combs 1 to 5 years old certainly do smell different from honey super combs, even to a human, so I'd assume that a bee can also detect the difference, and likely notice a stronger odor from an older comb.
I can't describe the smell of brood comb vs honey super comb, but when I would make comb honey, we would pull out the lowest medium of a 3-medium brood chamber (yes, all mediums - Friends Don't Let Friends Lift Deeps!) which was invariably empty in early spring to "compress the hive" a bit to get the bees working the Ross Round supers, and the odor was noticeable when hundreds of brood boxes were stacked in the barn vs the odor of the extracted-honey supers that had been stacked in the same spot all winter. Brood comb to me smells slightly of "dogs who swam in the river, and now need a bath", but that's a poor and incomplete description.
I have some treasured old frames that date back to the 1960s, given to me when I first started beekeeping, and I love the furniture-like finish that the bees have put on the wood, but I recycle all brood frames on a strict 5-year schedule, using queen-color thumbtacks, as I sell food for human consumption, and stick to a documented schedule on "sanitation" issues. With the plastic foundation, I expect that the bulk of my honey super comb will still be useful for an indefinite period, and perhaps outlive me.
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