Wax is an oily substance produced by animals, plants or minerals. It is solid at room temperature, plastic, easy to melt, and insoluble in water.
There are many types of wax that can be used in modern human society, which are mainly divided into several categories:
One is vegetable wax, including wood wax, bayberry wax, candelilla wax, Japanese wax, palm wax, rice bran wax, castor wax, etc.
The second is, such as beeswax, white wax, wool wax, spermaceti, etc.
The third is mineral wax, typically including montan wax, paraffin wax, petroleum wax, etc. There are also petroleum waxes that are classified into a separate category.
The fourth is synthetic wax, such as Fischer-Tropsch wax, polyethylene wax (PE wax), polypropylene wax (PP wax), ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer wax (EVA wax), oxidized polyethylene wax, etc.
Among them, many waxes appeared very late and are the crystallization of human chemical industry. The protagonist, currently an ant, is obviously unable to utilize this wax.
For example, the well-known paraffin, modern candles are made of this material. It is a wax paste obtained by solvent refining, solvent dewaxing or wax freeze crystallization and press dewaxing of the lubricating oil fraction obtained from crude oil distillation, and then deoiled and supplemented with refining to obtain flake or needle crystals.
Paraffin wax not only makes lighting tools such as candles, but can also be used to make matches, fiberboards, canvas, etc. It is also used as components and packaging materials for food, oral drugs and certain commodities (such as wax paper, crayons, candles, carbon paper), and coating materials for baking containers; used for fruit preservation, electrical component insulation, and improvement of rubber aging resistance and Increase flexibility, etc.; can also be used for oxidation to generate synthetic fatty acids. All-rounder
But in the context of the modern petrochemical industry, which is almost impossible to build in a lifetime, the protagonist cannot transform such a cheap and common material.
What he can learn from is the wax that humans can use at the low technological level in ancient times, that is, pure natural wax.
The most typical one is beeswax.
In fact, there are some insect waxes that can theoretically become protagonists. For example, the worm wax secreted by the ash beetle is the whitest type of natural wax. When attached to the trunk of a tree, it looks like snow. The white wax insect lived in Sichuan in the protagonist's original world. The protagonist does not feel that the climate of the place he is currently in is like that of Sichuan, so he can only give up this option.
Other bugs secrete wax, but their yields are often scarce and difficult to collect.
In the end, I can only turn my attention back to beeswax.
Beeswax, also known as yellow wax and beeswax. It is a fatty substance secreted by 4 pairs of wax glands in the abdomens of suitable-age worker bees in the bee colony. In a bee colony, worker bees use the wax they secrete to build the comb, seal the cover and feed room. The spleen is a place where bees store food, cultivate bees, and inhabit clumps. Therefore, beeswax is not only a product of the bee colony, but also a necessary material for its survival and reproduction.
Beeswax, a natural material, has a wide range of uses in industrial and agricultural production. In the cosmetics manufacturing industry, beeswax is contained in many beauty products, such as body wash, lipstick, rouge, etc.; in the candle processing industry, various types of candles can be made with beeswax as the main raw material; in the pharmaceutical industry, beeswax can be used to make Dental casting wax, base wax, adhesive wax, pill shells; in the food industry, it can be used as food coatings, packaging and coatings; in agriculture and animal husbandry, it can be used to make fruit tree grafting wax and pest adhesive; In beekeeping, nest foundations and wax bowls can be made.
This excellent material has been used by humans for a long time. Early candles were made of beeswax, so they were expensive.
This is because collecting beeswax is not an easy task and requires a lot of labor and time costs.
For a long time in history, humans did not keep bees and could only collect honey, wax, and bee pupae from wild beehives.
Beeswax is mostly collected in spring and autumn. Collectors need to use experience and technology to protect themselves from bee attacks. They take out the entire hive and manually extract it. Generally, the hive after removing the honey is heated and melted in a water pot to remove the upper layer of cocoons and bee corpses. , foam and other impurities, filter it while it is hot and let it cool. The beeswax will condense into blocks and float on the water. Take it out and it will become yellow wax. The yellow wax is then refined and decolorized to become white wax.
The protagonist who has no good intentions towards the hive has great ambitions. In this action, his goal is not only to obtain a large amount of honey and beeswax at once, he also wants to tame at least one queen bee to achieve the domestication of bees. .
Unlike domesticating flies and beetles, humans have never had experience in taming these two insects, but domesticating bees is one of the few achievements humans have made in insect domestication.
The so-called domesticated bees are actually not accurate, because there is no big difference in behavior and shape between wild bees and domestic bees. Escaped domestic bees can easily become wild bees, and wild bees can also be captured and raised. Therefore, bees can only be said to be semi-domesticated and raised by humans.
Humans naturally keep bees to obtain their products, including: honey, royal jelly, propolis, pollen, beeswax, bee pupae and bee venom.
Human beekeeping has a history of thousands of years. For example, in primitive society, the containers used by people in daily life were occupied by bees that flew in accidentally and became honeycombs, or when people tried to move the hollow tree sections where the bees lived near their homes and took some care of the bees so that they could survive. , began to raise domestic bees.
During most of the Neolithic Age after about 5000 BC, people made and used pottery vessels; people along the Mediterranean coast used pottery pots as honeycombs; the Middle East and the ancient Egyptians used thick tubes made of clay that were laid flat and overlapped Make a honeycomb. Later, people weaved baskets to be used as honeycombs.
In 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians carried out beekeeping in the upper and lower reaches of the Nile River. Because the season is earlier in Upper Egypt, beekeepers put their honeycombs on rafts. After collecting honey in one place, they move it along the Nile River to another place where nectar plants bloom. On the stone wall of the Temple of the Sun built in 2400 BC at Abu Sir; Abu Ghorb in Egypt, there is a picture of ancient beekeeping: a man is using smoke to pile up the honeycombs in clay pots, and the other is Some people are filtering honey and putting it in small jars. There is also a bee on the painting.
The history of beekeeping in China is also long. Historians and researchers have inferred from the results of studying oracle bone inscriptions that beekeeping has been practiced in my country since the Yin and Shang Dynasties. Works written after the 3rd century AD, such as "The Biography of Gao Shi" by Huang Fumi of the Jin Dynasty, "Natural History" by Jin Zhanghua and "Yongjia Di Ji", have precise records of domestic bees.
It is precisely because of the successful precedent that the protagonist is full of ambition and confidence in domesticating bees.
