Beeswax

Beeswax has no fixed melting point, because its composition varies slightly with its origin.

The JECFA assessment cites a melting range of 62 to 65 °C in two specifications and 60 to 67 °C in a third.

Pure beeswax from the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, consists of at least 284 different compounds.

FAO counts 21 major compounds, each making up more than 1% of pure beeswax, which together account for 56% of the wax; the other 44% are diverse minor compounds.

A JECFA assessment gives typical shares of linear wax monoesters and hydroxymonoesters at 35 to 45%, and of complex wax esters at 15 to 27%.

The same assessment gives odd-numbered straight-chain hydrocarbons at 12 to 16%, free fatty acids at typically 12 to 14%, and free primary fatty alcohols at about 1%.

Young worker bees secrete beeswax as small platelets from eight wax glands on the underside of the abdomen, and use it to build the comb.

Commercial beeswax is obtained from honeycombs after the honey is removed, by melting the combs with hot water, steam or solar heat.

In frame hives, wax yield is only about 1 to 2% of honey production by weight, compared with 10 to 15% in top-bar and traditional beekeeping.

Beeswax is easy to adulterate, usually with cheap paraffin waxes, and the adulteration can only be detected with chemical tests.

A conference abstract presented at EurBee 8 (2018) reported that more than 65% of 137 comb foundation and wax block samples from 15 European countries, collected 2016 to 2018, were adulterated with paraffin, at shares from 5 to 93%.

EFSA's 2020 assessment of beeswax adulterated with paraffin or stearin recommended that purity testing combine at least two physico-chemical parameters with advanced methods, to detect adulterants reliably at levels below 5%.