I can understand where you're coming from. 87 year old data, for sure. The thing you have to understand is that even carbon dated neolithic era beeswax is almost identical to modern day beeswax in molecular structure. I read this somewhere in my studies but unfortunately could not readily find it for you. I know there's a paper about the chemistry of neolithic beeswax that you can pay for that probably has that information. By that accord, really it doesn't matter terribly much that it's 87 years old. The only changes in it are effectively from the environmental differences (such as pollen types).

I should also further mention that I've done alot of searching on paraffin as well. Paraffin has an exceedingly wide variance in the calorie/g output in terms of heat. This is dependant from what I've seen on the 'hardness' or grade of the paraffin. In fact, the rating which this journal of the american chemical society used was actually the highest I'd seen anywhere! Most tests actually put paraffin in the 8500-9500 cal/g range. It's alot easier to find that figure than one for beeswax, though I'm not sure why.

There's alot of BS about paraffin, soy and beeswax. The reality is the only true measure I have is:

A) beeswax has higher melt point
B) beeswax has a higher ignition point
C) beeswax seems to burn slower though this could be because
it doesn't melt it's fuel as easily and waste half of it
D) beeswas puts out more heat

Soy candles are odd, but alot of testing is being done on them. They have their own set of problems but for the most part I see no real reason to use them over paraffin except the renewable resource arguement.

Now one could say that this is a super expensive wax but on the whole I found it's 5 dollars per pound if you know where to look. Further, it's far more effective than other similiar 'high grade' waxes. For instance, bayberry wax only has an energy of about 39.3kj/g, which is actually less than that of even paraffin! Paraffin is about 42 kj/g (it ranges, obviously but this is about the average I saw).

Using the calorie value of 12660 for the 'commercial' beeswax you get a KJ/g of about 53!

So from a purely survival standpoint in terms of heat output, fuel usage, candle duration it is clearly the superior fuel. Unfortunately alot of people know this and hike the price up. My recommendation? Learn to make your own, or find someone who sells them cheap.