Beeswax

Origin

Beeswax is produced by the so-called "building bees". These have a total of eight glands on their abdomen from which they squeeze the wax out in the shape of tiny, brittle platelets. In the next step, the bees use their mouthparts to build the honeycombs, which serve as honey storage and breeding grounds. The beeswax freshly squeezed out of the glands is colourless. As soon as the honeycombs are used, they turn dark. To enable bees to produce wax at all, they have to consume a lot of nutrients. It is estimated that bees consume between 4 and 10 kg of honey to produce one kilo of beeswax. Depending on the origin of the beeswax, it contains about 300 different substances. Over time, beekeepers remove the older, darker combs to prevent disease. The beeswax is then extracted from these combs.

The honey produced by bees and beeswax have been used for thousands of years by people of different cultures as food or as a high-quality raw material for ointments and cosmetics. In antiquity, writing boards made of wax were used. Wax figures and masks were found as grave goods. The Greek physician Calenus (129-199 AD) , among other things, worked molten beeswax into creams. The London Pharmacopeia of 1618 also described the use of beeswax in an ointment, today known as cold cream. In ancient times, people used to plug holes in their teeth with beeswax.