For thousands of years, people from different cultures have used honey produced by bees, along with beeswax, as food (honey) or as a basic raw material of high value for ointments and cosmetics (beeswax). In ancient times, scribes used tablets made of wax. Figures and masks were also buried with the bodies. The molten beeswax was one of the materials used by the Greek physician, Calenus (129-199), as an ingredient in creams. The London Pharmacopoeia of 1618 also describes how beeswax was used as an ointment which is now known as ‘cold cream’.
The wax is yellow or light brown (yellow beeswax) or white or yellowish-white (white beeswax) and is insipid. It does not stick to the teeth and has a fine, matte, non-crystalline granular composition. It emits a faint smell of honey and, when hot, forms a soft, malleable mass. It is insoluble in water, partially soluble in alcohol and ether, and completely soluble in fatty acids and volatile oils.
A mixture of cerotinic and miricilic acids forms 70-75% of the beeswax, with approximately 70 esters of C16 to C36 acids and mixtures of C24 to C36 alcohols. In addition, saccharides represent 5-15.5% and the remaining components are minerals, dyes and seasonings, along with vitamin A. In times past, beeswax was used in large quantities in the candle-making industry. Currently, synthetic waxes are used as raw material in the production of candles and beeswax is only used for the production of candles of great value. In the pharmaceutical market, beeswax is used mainly for its antibiotic characteristics (ointments, creams, pastes, plasters).
The hardness of beeswax makes it unsuitable for direct use as a base for ointment, but has a high capacity to absorb water used in mixtures with liquid paraffin or oils as an emulsifier in lipsticks, facial creams, lotions, masks of eyelashes, eye creams, eyeshadow, makeup, body creams and white nail pencils. Beeswax is also used in dental technology (dental molds), in cleaning products (furniture and floor cleaner), in forestry (grafting bitumen) as well as in paints (oil chalk, lithographic stains, papers with wax) ).