It is well known that physicochemical properties of chitin are related with the extraction method. Recently, it was revealed that some physicochemical properties of chitin are also related with taxonomical relationship. For the first time in this study, it was tested how these properties of chitin are affected by different body parts of one organism. The chitins were extracted from five different body parts (head, thorax, abdomen, legs and wings) of honeybee. These chitins were physicochemically characterized and differences among these body parts were identified. Highest chitin content was observed in legs (13.25%) while the lowest from thorax (6.79%). The surface morphologies of the isolated chitin structures from five different body parts were analyzed with SEM, as a result, five different types of surface morphologies were recorded. However, three different types of surface morphologies were observed only in abdomen. Maximum degradation temperatures (DTG(max)) of thorax, abdomen, legs and wings were recorded between 359 and 367 °C while DTG(max) value of head chitin was found as 308 °C.
Keywords: Apis mellifera; Biopolymer; Fibers; Surface morphology; Thermal stability.
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