Hi all
I remembered I had a friend who keeps bees so I asked about the properties of beeswax and he told me quite a lot of interesting stuff including the fact that left to its own devices it will go very hard without any treatment at all. He said that if the beekeepers need to mould the wax they need to soak it for up to 24 hours to get it soft enough. Could not tell me if there was much difference between domestic and native bee wax other than more pollens,twigs etc in the wild stuff. He also pointed out that the mouthpiece of the indigenous australian instrument the digigeridoo which is very hard is made from beeswax. So I suspect that the beeswax on swords like the Mandau is just in its raw form and allowed to dry for a while to fully harden.
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