Beeswax

About This Product

Beeswax is secreted from glands on the abdomen of worker honeybees, Apis mellifera, and worked into the hexagonal comb of the hive. It is recovered by melting and filtering rendered comb, and is supplied as yellow unbleached pastilles under the INCI name Cera Flava, CAS 8012-89-3, or bleached white as Cera Alba, CAS 8006-40-4. Chemically it is a mixture rather than a single compound: roughly 70 percent long-chain esters, principally myricyl palmitate, with around 15 percent hydrocarbons and 12 percent free fatty acids. That blend of components with different chain lengths is why it melts across a range of 61 to 65 degrees Celsius rather than at a single point, and why it is plastic and workable rather than brittle at room temperature. In a candle the high melting point produces a slow, long burn and a firm pillar that holds its shape in warm weather, but it also means the wick must be sized up, because the wax needs more heat to draw up the capillary. Beeswax shrinks little on cooling, so it releases cleanly from moulds, and it carries a natural honey aroma that will read through a light fragrance. It is used in pillar, taper and container candles, in balms, salves and lipsticks as a structuring wax, in furniture and shoe polish, in food coating and as a release agent. Bio Green Wax supplies food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and industrial grades to specification on melting point, acid and ester value, peroxide value, hydrocarbon content and colour.