Cera Alba (beeswax)*

Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees. Western honey bees use the beeswax to build honeycomb cells in which their young are raised and honey and pollen are stored. Typically, for a honey bee keeper, 10 pounds of honey yields 1 pound of wax.

Its main components are palmitate, palmitoleate, hydroxypalmitate and oleate esters of long-chain (30-32 carbons) aliphatic alcohols.

Beeswax was ancient man’s first plastic, and for thousands of years has been used as a modeling material, to create sculpture and jewelry molds for use in the lost-wax casting process. Lost-wax casting of metals, practised by ancient Greeks and Romans, involved coating of a wax model with plaster, melting the wax out of the resulting mould and filling the space with molten metal. The technique is still used today by jewellers, goldsmiths and sculptors, in dentistry and even in the industrial manufacture of complex components by investment casting of metals.

More recently it found use as a component of sealing wax, and as emulsifier in cosmetics. It is often mixed with other ingredients such as olive oil.

Our top quality beeswax is derived from the bees that live on the high mountains of Crete in a clean environment rich in aromatic herbs.