Jelly Beans

These sweet and colourful jelly beans are covered in shellac wax made by the lac beetle, a little scale beetle from South East Asia that exudes a chitinous mix of resin and wax as a protective cocoons for her eggs and the twigs she lays them on. We extract the wax from this beetle-made composite and use it as a polish for furniture and a coating for sweets like these and chewing gum. 

Check out our blog post for a longer read about the weird and wonderful properties of waxes, including beeswax (the glandular produce of the humble honeybee), earth wax that is mined from seams in the ground and artificial eye wax that is used to make prosthetic glass eyes.