Beeswax Analysis: Developing New Methodologies for Determination of Adulteration (Session 2)

Session 1 - June 12 at 10:00am EDT / 2:00pm BST

Diluting beeswax with cheap substitutes, such as paraffin or stearic acid, is a frequently observed phenomenon. Routine testing of beeswax is therefore crucial to avoid both commercial damage and negative health impacts on bee populations. However, most testing methods are time-consuming, expensive, and use complicated processes.

Intertek Food Services developed solutions that allow fast, reliable, and cost-efficient detection of beeswax adulterations. Their methods can show common adulterants in beeswax, including stearic acid, paraffin, and tallow.

In this webinar, Dr. Antje Stahl, Intertek Research Associate, will discuss the issues surrounding traditional beeswax testing and the analytical methods Intertek Food Services is using to offer in-house beeswax testing.

Meet Our Speaker: Dr. Antje Stahl (Research Associate and Laboratory Supervisor Authenticity / NMR)

Dr. Antje Stahl received a Bachelor of Science from the City University of Applied Sciences Bremen in the International Degree Program‚ Industrial and Environmental Biology. Afterwards, she started an international Master of Science program at the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. She conducted her subsequent PhD at Jacobs University Bremen. In 2016, she joined an R&D project at Intertek Food Services as a postdoctoral research associate, working on the development of methods that aim at species identification via proteomic approaches. Currently she is part of the NMR spectroscopy team, that focuses on the testing of honey authenticity. She further works on the method development and testing of beeswax authenticity, including techniques like FT-IR, NMR, and GC.