In talking about lipids today, we also mentioned waxes. Now, I always think of honey when I hear wax probably because of this great field trip to a honey farm when I was younger. They had the most delicious honey and beautiful honey-wax candles.
It turns out beeswax is made up of several compounds (much like the oils we mentioned in class). It’s chemical formula is usually a close version of C15H31COOC30H61, where its main constituents are palmitate, palmitoleate, and oleate esters of of aliphatic alcohols.
Apparantly there are even saponification differences between the European and Oriental beeswax. While the saponification value (refers to how much base you need to add to make a soap) for European beeswax is between 3 and 5, that of Oriental beeswax is 8-9.
Below is a picture of Triacontanyl palmitate, one of the major components of beeswax. Looking at the long carbon chains, it becomes quite apparent why wax may be involved in repelling water…
That’s really interesting that thre’s a difference between the beeswax of European and Oriental bees. I wonder if the difference is because of environmental differences or because the bees are different sub species?