Caracterización de ceras de siete especies de Abejas nativas de Colombia, por aplicación de análisis multivariado al comportamiento térmico, cristalinidad y composición química.

Abstract

The characterization of waxes belonging to seven native species of Colombian bees was determined, using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) simultaneous with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), combustion calorimetry, infrared spectroscopy with Fourier transform (FT-IR), gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to find melting temperatures and fusion heats in a cyclic heating process, cooling and overheating; to determine the variation of mass according to the temperature, to establish the kinetics and to determine the kinetic parameters of the thermal degradation, to calculate the combustion heat, to obtain reference infrared spectra, to determine the main components and their fraction, to obtain the percentage of crystallinity of waxes used by bees to build food storage pots, brood cells and the involucrum. The wax was collected from the species: Melipona favosa favosa, Melipona fuscipes, Melipona compressipes, Trigona (Frieseomelitta) nigra paupera, Trigona (Tetragosnisca) angustula, Bombus (Fervidobombus) atratus and Nanotrigona sp. In addition the wax of Apis mellifera (Africanized) was analyzed and it was taken as a reference sample, since more information is found in the literature. The significant differences in each analysis were determined by application of ANOVA variance analysis at a significance level of 0.05 and similarities were corroborated using major component analysis and cluster analysis. Significant differences were found in all analyses between the samples belonging to different tribes, highlighting the differences between the samples of Bombus atratus and that of Apis Africanized, the analyses do not establish an ordered pattern in the samples belonging to the same species or genus but these alternate in different order depending on the analysis performed. The values of melting temperature, melting heat, combustion heat and Arrhenius parameters are higher in the sample of Apis Africanized and lower in the samples of Bombus atratus and the other samples tend to have intermediate values between these two species without presenting remarkable differences among them. The kinetic of the pyrolysis process is of first order and is governed by the equation of Arrhenius presenting an increase in the activation energy of 38.38 kJ/mol from the wax of Bombus atratus to the one of Apis mellifera (Africanized).