Is honey comb edible?

[deknow]

well, you've got to breath...and given a choice, anyone will leave a tent, or open a car window if someone "contaminates" the air inside.

...but you don't have to eat wax that has high concentrations of fluvalinate and coumaphos (an organophosphate for those keeping score at home)...especially insulting because it was put in the hive...therefore put in the wax by other beekeepers.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754

deknow

[deknow]

from the study cited above....note PPM not PPB!

Foundation wax is uniformly contaminated with miticides

Twenty-one wax samples from six different commercial and two private foundation sources were uniformly contaminated with up to 10.1 ppm fluvalinate (mean of 2±0.6 ppm) and up to 14.3 ppm coumaphos (mean of 3.3±1.0 ppm, Table 5)

[deknow]

...i believe that the mrl for coumaphos in food is .1ppm...and you are going to chew on a comb midrib that is avg 14ppm????

deknow

[Lone]

Thanks Deknow, that is a good study.
I see that those two toxins found in nearly every sample are varroa treatments.  If you use foundationless and didn't treat with these chemicals you might avoid those particular ones.  But when you get down to the crop pesticides, there are some found in about half the samples.  Neither Stella nor anyone else could avoid contaminates completely.

Almost all wax and pollen samples (98.4%) contained two or more pesticide residues

Even here where there is no varroa or cropping, I'm sure my wax wouldn't be perfectly clean.  It would be interesting to compare an australian study though.  We'd also have to know the safe doses (mrl I'm guessing) for those other chemicals, and compare with insecticides found on other foods to know which are more dangerous to eat, vegetables or beeswax.

Lone

[stella]

Ive been changing the trend in my family's diet for the last 4 to 5 years to eat 'cleaner'. That was my original concern with the issue of contaminants in the comb wax and my son thinking that, as I did, that everything from that un-medicated first- ever hive would be good for us. AND, also one of the main reasons Ive involved myself in beekeeping to begin with. Self sustainable.

Lone, I laughed when I read your post about mud pies and meat. Too funny!

I feed my growing boys venison, home grown chicken, beans fresh off the vine, etc. So you know where Im comin from. I never considered mud pies! They would eat them if I put them on the table and ran my nutritional, "your young, go green" rhetoric.

But now your talkin,  'fluvalinate' and 'coumaphos' and stuff like... "(mean of 3.3±1.0 ppm, Table 5)"....basically youve lost me. College degree or not, I cant grasp this.
But Im trying to learn.  :-D And I thank you for the input!

[Scadsobees]

First off, you'd need to eat a lot of wax to get to the point where you are consuming a quantity of contaminants that would have a negative effect on you.  High ppm, but still low quantity.

If you are scraping off of plastic foundation, by now you've most likely scraped the most highly "contaminated" wax off.  And while 13ppm may seem high, you'd still need to eat a lot of that to be dangerous.

And most beeks are nipping bites of cross comb between boxes, and that is all natural.

Eat it and be happy, it won't hurt a thing.

[alfred]

My understanding is that beeswax contains among other things Policosanol which has been shown to be effective in lowering ldl cholesterol and raising hdl cholesterol. Almost as effective as plant sterols and stanols for lowering cholesterol. 2-3 grams per day can lower cholestarol as between 6 and 15% on a case by case basis.

Alfred

[BoBn]

First off, you'd need to eat a lot of wax to get to the point where you are consuming a quantity of contaminants that would have a negative effect on you.  High ppm, but still low quantity.

That may be true, but how much of these contaminants are bio-accumulated and end up in your fat tissues and liver? What are the cumulative effects of long term exposure?  Why would you want to expose yourself to contamination if it could be avoided?  It would seem that it is not much of a concern for grown adults, but young children would have a much greater risk of effects.  Like exposure to lead or mercury.
I choose not to put contaminated wax foundation in my hives.