The Laccifer Lacca beetle which is also known as the Lac insect is a native of India and Thailand. The word lac is derived from the Sanskrit word, laksha which means 100,000 and refers to the large number of insects required to produce one pound of lac. In fact the word Lakh comes from lac.
Lac or shellac as it is known all over the world does not come from the crushed bodies of the insect as cochineal does but from their cocoons. However, thousands of insects are killed just the same.
For several centuries India used lac for its purple red dye for clothing and to make into ornaments and trinkets. Today chemical dyes have replaced lac-derived dyes. In 1849 the US discovered that lac thinned with ethyl alcohol could make a quick-drying, tough, colorless, transparent finish – and it was edible too! So now the largest uses for shellac today are for the wood polish, food, drug, and cosmetic industries
The insects feed on trees. In India the host trees are Pipal, Banyan, Sappan, Arhan, Babul, Khair, Ber, Kusum, Dhak and Palas. In Thailand, the host trees are the Samanea Saman or Rain Tree and the Pigeon Pea. In China they use the hibiscus species as well.
Their life cycle is about six months .These tiny red insects swarm onto the tree. When settled on the twigs and branches, they penetrate the bark and start feeding on the sap.
Only five percent of the massed insects are males whose lives are short. They fertilise the females who lay hundreds of eggs. In order to shield the insects the mother exudes a red resinous fluid which, on contact with air, forms a hard shell like crust over her brood. .The great mass of male and female bugs on each tree gradually becomes inactive as the cocoon forms over them. In the sixth or seventh month, the young begin to break through the crust and swarm to new feeding grounds. The red insect in its larval stage is about the size of an apple seed. The insects can be found in such high densities that they form a resin layer up to 1cm thick on tree branches
Shortly after the young have been born and the mother has made the cocoon of red lac, people harvest the lac encrustation from the trees. Thousands of encrusted twigs, called "sticklac", are cut off and taken to refining centres where the encrustations are scraped off. Some break the encrustations off right in the forest with a wooden mallet. This material is called “grainlac”. In either case, this is the first step in the harvest of shellac gum. For lac dye production, this should be done before all of the insects escape since they contain, rather than the resin, the desired pigment. The insects are killed by exposing the stick lac to the sun.
At refining centers, sticklac is scraped to remove the resin from the twigs and then it is ground (as is grainlac) in a primitive “chakki”, At this stage, the ground lac contains a mixture of resin, insect remains, twigs . This is now passed through a coarse screen.
After the chaff is sifted out, it is soaked in water for several hours in large jars and the eggs of the lac insect are crushed manually to separate the lac from the insect remains. The lac is spread out on a floor to dry in the sun. The semi-refined product from this operation is known as "seedlac”. It is yellow to reddish-brown in color. This is the raw material from which both orange flake shellac and bleached shellac are made.
Shellac falls into three categories: hand-made, machine-made and bleached. In the handmade process, seedlac is packed into a long hose like bag which is heated uniformly by slowly rotating them over a charcoal fire .The molten lac is squeezed through the pores of the bag fall on to a wet hearthstone. This soft lac is turned over to a "bhilwaya," who works it into sheets. With a strip of palm leaf, he spreads the molten lac over a ceramic jar containing hot water. It is stretched till becomes a very thin sheet about 5 feet by 4 feet. This is laid aside to cool and harden, after which it is broken into thin flakes. Shellac manufactured by mechanical methods uses machines for the same process of heating, softening and turning into flakes.
In the solvent process, raw seedlac and ethyl alcohol are put into a dissolving tank. The solution is then filtered, the alcohol is evaporated and the remaining lac turned into flakes. When dissolved in alcohol, shellac becomes amber-colored and is called orange shellac. For many applications, however, a colorless film is preferred. To meet this market preference, the color is removed by a bleaching process and sulphuric acid and this is called white shellac.
In order to increase the lac, shellac cultivators cut lac-bearing twigs from an infected tree a few days before the emergence of the larvae. A bundle of such twigs, known as “broodlac”, is tied to a new tree which becomes the new host.
Where are you likely to come across this beetle residue know as lac, lacca or lacquer? Antique record shop - shellac was also used in the production of gramophone records until 1950.( During the British Empire days ,before Indian independence , Britain controlled the world supply of lac, and all phonograph records made outside the Empire depended on British exports. In fact, the British levied a lac cess on Jharkhand’s tribal cultivators. It also set up a Lac Directorate and the Indian Lac Research Institute in Ranchi in the early twentieth century). Very rarely as a dye (India just exports 15 tonnes for dyeing). We used to use it as a dye for wool and silk. In China it was a dye for leather goods, certainly as a varnish for furniture, musical instruments and other wooden objects. It is used by wood workers as a finish and sealer.
You have probably eating this larva shell at some point l It is used to coat candy (such as M & Ms) and pharmaceuticals. When you go abroad and you see the shiny waxy finish on apples, pears and peaches – that is beetle wax and it is used on practically all fruits and vegetables to make them look glossy. Many vitamins, pills and food supplements are coated with shellac to make them slide easily down your throat.
If you read the labels you might find it in adhesives, shoe polish, insulators, food glazes, hair dyes and hair sprays, mirror backing, jewellery setting, buttons. Stiffening agents of shoes and felt hats, lithographic ink, playing card finishes. Abrasives and some cement, sealing wax and self polishing wax, grinding wheels, paper and foil coatings. How many of you wear laquer bangles? About 90,000 insects are needed to produce one pound of shellac.
India uses 30 tonnes of shellac during the general elections to seal the boxes. Indian lac comes from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Orissa. In the 1950s India produced 50,000 tonnes which is now about 12,000 tonnes - with most of it being exported to the USA, Europe. Thailand produces about the same as China and sends it to Japan. Unless you WANT to eat and use beetle remains, start being a more observant consumer.
- Maneka Gandhi
Lac or shellac as it is known all over the world does not come from the crushed bodies of the insect as cochineal does but from their cocoons. However, thousands of insects are killed just the same.
For several centuries India used lac for its purple red dye for clothing and to make into ornaments and trinkets. Today chemical dyes have replaced lac-derived dyes. In 1849 the US discovered that lac thinned with ethyl alcohol could make a quick-drying, tough, colorless, transparent finish – and it was edible too! So now the largest uses for shellac today are for the wood polish, food, drug, and cosmetic industries
The insects feed on trees. In India the host trees are Pipal, Banyan, Sappan, Arhan, Babul, Khair, Ber, Kusum, Dhak and Palas. In Thailand, the host trees are the Samanea Saman or Rain Tree and the Pigeon Pea. In China they use the hibiscus species as well.
Their life cycle is about six months .These tiny red insects swarm onto the tree. When settled on the twigs and branches, they penetrate the bark and start feeding on the sap.
Only five percent of the massed insects are males whose lives are short. They fertilise the females who lay hundreds of eggs. In order to shield the insects the mother exudes a red resinous fluid which, on contact with air, forms a hard shell like crust over her brood. .The great mass of male and female bugs on each tree gradually becomes inactive as the cocoon forms over them. In the sixth or seventh month, the young begin to break through the crust and swarm to new feeding grounds. The red insect in its larval stage is about the size of an apple seed. The insects can be found in such high densities that they form a resin layer up to 1cm thick on tree branches
Shortly after the young have been born and the mother has made the cocoon of red lac, people harvest the lac encrustation from the trees. Thousands of encrusted twigs, called "sticklac", are cut off and taken to refining centres where the encrustations are scraped off. Some break the encrustations off right in the forest with a wooden mallet. This material is called “grainlac”. In either case, this is the first step in the harvest of shellac gum. For lac dye production, this should be done before all of the insects escape since they contain, rather than the resin, the desired pigment. The insects are killed by exposing the stick lac to the sun.
At refining centers, sticklac is scraped to remove the resin from the twigs and then it is ground (as is grainlac) in a primitive “chakki”, At this stage, the ground lac contains a mixture of resin, insect remains, twigs . This is now passed through a coarse screen.
After the chaff is sifted out, it is soaked in water for several hours in large jars and the eggs of the lac insect are crushed manually to separate the lac from the insect remains. The lac is spread out on a floor to dry in the sun. The semi-refined product from this operation is known as "seedlac”. It is yellow to reddish-brown in color. This is the raw material from which both orange flake shellac and bleached shellac are made.
Shellac falls into three categories: hand-made, machine-made and bleached. In the handmade process, seedlac is packed into a long hose like bag which is heated uniformly by slowly rotating them over a charcoal fire .The molten lac is squeezed through the pores of the bag fall on to a wet hearthstone. This soft lac is turned over to a "bhilwaya," who works it into sheets. With a strip of palm leaf, he spreads the molten lac over a ceramic jar containing hot water. It is stretched till becomes a very thin sheet about 5 feet by 4 feet. This is laid aside to cool and harden, after which it is broken into thin flakes. Shellac manufactured by mechanical methods uses machines for the same process of heating, softening and turning into flakes.
In the solvent process, raw seedlac and ethyl alcohol are put into a dissolving tank. The solution is then filtered, the alcohol is evaporated and the remaining lac turned into flakes. When dissolved in alcohol, shellac becomes amber-colored and is called orange shellac. For many applications, however, a colorless film is preferred. To meet this market preference, the color is removed by a bleaching process and sulphuric acid and this is called white shellac.
In order to increase the lac, shellac cultivators cut lac-bearing twigs from an infected tree a few days before the emergence of the larvae. A bundle of such twigs, known as “broodlac”, is tied to a new tree which becomes the new host.
Where are you likely to come across this beetle residue know as lac, lacca or lacquer? Antique record shop - shellac was also used in the production of gramophone records until 1950.( During the British Empire days ,before Indian independence , Britain controlled the world supply of lac, and all phonograph records made outside the Empire depended on British exports. In fact, the British levied a lac cess on Jharkhand’s tribal cultivators. It also set up a Lac Directorate and the Indian Lac Research Institute in Ranchi in the early twentieth century). Very rarely as a dye (India just exports 15 tonnes for dyeing). We used to use it as a dye for wool and silk. In China it was a dye for leather goods, certainly as a varnish for furniture, musical instruments and other wooden objects. It is used by wood workers as a finish and sealer.
You have probably eating this larva shell at some point l It is used to coat candy (such as M & Ms) and pharmaceuticals. When you go abroad and you see the shiny waxy finish on apples, pears and peaches – that is beetle wax and it is used on practically all fruits and vegetables to make them look glossy. Many vitamins, pills and food supplements are coated with shellac to make them slide easily down your throat.
If you read the labels you might find it in adhesives, shoe polish, insulators, food glazes, hair dyes and hair sprays, mirror backing, jewellery setting, buttons. Stiffening agents of shoes and felt hats, lithographic ink, playing card finishes. Abrasives and some cement, sealing wax and self polishing wax, grinding wheels, paper and foil coatings. How many of you wear laquer bangles? About 90,000 insects are needed to produce one pound of shellac.
India uses 30 tonnes of shellac during the general elections to seal the boxes. Indian lac comes from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Orissa. In the 1950s India produced 50,000 tonnes which is now about 12,000 tonnes - with most of it being exported to the USA, Europe. Thailand produces about the same as China and sends it to Japan. Unless you WANT to eat and use beetle remains, start being a more observant consumer.
- Maneka Gandhi
