Determination of the proportion of pure beeswax recovered from crude beeswax resources at local honey wine making houses in Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is among the top four beeswax producing countries and this is considerably attributed to the predominantly traditional system of beekeeping production, which has relatively higher beeswax products per hive. In terms of foreign market, honey and beeswax, are among the main livestock products of the country exported to the international market. Based on the existing situation of the country, there are different sources of crude beeswax which include but not limited to left over from honey wine making houses, old and broken combs and the residue of honey purification process. The main source of crude beeswax that used for the processors and export companies is the crude beeswax produced and collected from the local honey wine making houses. Due to the absence of enough information on the recovered percentage of pure wax in particular after processing of bees wax collected from honey wine making house left over, there is always a dispute between the internal revenue and custom authority and beeswax exporters on the level of pure beeswax extracted from the crude source for taxation purpose. Therefore, the objective of this research was to investigate the percentage of pure beeswax recovered from crude beeswax extraction when the wax resource is from local honey wine making house left over. To implement the proposed research the representative crude beeswax samples were collected across honey and beeswax potential regions at 42 sites of the four regions which were bulked into 17 samples by homogenization and the samples were extracted by using two techniques, manual and mechanical methods. The percentage of pure wax recovered from 5kg of crude beeswax from local honey wine making houses left over was varied from 30 to 37.0% with mean of 33.5% using manual extraction methods and 12 to 32% with mean of 22% using mechanical method. The average percentage of pure wax recovered from crude wax from local honey wine houses left over by using both extraction methods is 33.5% and 22%, respectively with an average value of 27.75%. On the other hand, the chemical parameters results indicated that, all of the values for all the samples fall under acceptable ranges and standards except the total volatile matter which is greater than the required standard level. Therefore, based on these findings, it is proposed that the bees wax processors and exporters to pay the required tax based on the indicative research result and type of extraction method used. Further studies on identification of the optimum temperature and time required in heating crude beeswax for extraction process and study on other beeswax sources should also be evaluated for the rate of extraction of pure beeswax as compared to the current one which will give a broad spectrum about the extraction rate of beeswax in the country.