My friend and I want to make lip balm and lotions with beeswax and we are concerned about pesticides in our wax, I was wondering if there is a way to clean the wax of pesticides somehow?
If you melt the wax and mix it with water, the water soluble pesticide will be left in the water once the wax freezes at room temperature. One should be able to melt the wax just by pouring boiling water on it.
Yes we do from our domesticated hives, but we also do bee removes and we want to use the wild wax and honey for external products(lip balm,lotions,etc..).
I'm going to disagree with the comment above. The pesticides that end up in wax are not water soluble in the first place (if they were the would not dissolve in wax).
Some studies have shown that pesticides can collect in wax, but the levels are low compared to other sources we are commonly exposed to. The exception is from managed hives where miticides are used and the wax comes into direct contact with the pesticides. Thus you are more likely to have higher pesticide contamination in your managed (treated) hives than in wax from wild colonies.
Ethanol could also be used as a solvent dissolving both, organic and polar compound.
The next step would be acetone, but nobody really want to go there.
I think once the wax contains pesticides there's not much that can be realistically done to remove them. The darker the wax the older so use the lightest wax possible. Virgin wax (recently built but no eggs, honey, or pollen stored in it yet) would be best. That's my 2 cents worth.
chemicals in beeswax is nothing compared to trip though fresh fruit and veggies covered with lanate and alar at a super walmart.
bees are smart, they will avoid chemical laden fields and find wild nectar in the environment if they can
Unless the bees are kept organically, it's likely that they will have been exposed to varroa treatments, which I guess will at least partly end up in the wax.
If I was buying beeswax for cosmetic purposes, I'd be looking to source it from organically kept bees.
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