Everyone loves a good mystery, which is why “History Detectives” is such a popular show. This week, the PBS sleuths descended on Oregon State University to help solve the puzzle of a 25-pound chunk of elaborately carved beeswax that somehow ended up on the Oregon Coast.

Portlander Phyllis Koch contacted the show with the story of the beeswax, which was found on the beach at Manzanita. The piece was covered with strange carvings that led Koch to believe the piece might be old. She wanted investigators to find out more about the waxy mystery.

That’s where OSU professor Michael Burgett comes in. The bee specialist was one of the experts who the PBS show called on to help figure out the origin and significance of the beeswax chunk.

Art historian and appraiser Elyse Luray was the History Detective on the job for this Oregon mystery. As she waited to interview Burgett in the OSU Bee Lab on Tuesday morning, Luray said she loved her job because it involves lots of travel and enables her to connect people with the past.

She’s meticulous about that work, and she and Burgett repeated his interview several times to get it just right.

In addition to interviewing experts, Luray also depends on a team of researchers to do background work on the item under investigation. In fact, by the time Luray and the film crew showed up, the beeswax mystery had essentially been solved.

But the program’s appeal is in watching how the researchers trace the object from its discovery to the final “reveal,” when the object’s owner learns the history behind a mystery — and what they learn along the way.

“We show people how to do the research, and how the object is connected to American history,” Luray said. In this case, they were trying to discover whether the beeswax came from a Spanish shipwreck off the Oregon coast in the early 1700s.

Burgett’s expertise helped to establish that the wax was imported from the Philippines, where Giant East Asian honeybees produce massive amounts of the candle-making stuff.

Renato Rodriguez, associate producer of “History Detectives,” whose job includes contacting experts from around the country to help determine the story behind the object, said the case of the beeswax recalls a tale of shipwrecks, and exemplifies the control that the Catholic Church had over the 18th century’s global markets.

Two Spanish galleons disappeared off the Oregon coast between the late 1600s and early 1700s while sailing from the Philippines to Mexico. The cargo included beeswax, which was being sent to Mexico because the church had prohibited using beef tallow to make church candles because burning animal fat produced black smoke. Only clean-burning beeswax candles were to be used, to preserve church furnishings.

So the question History Detectives had to answer: Was Koch’s chunk of beeswax part of that church-decreed supply?

The answer will be aired next summer on Oregon Public Broadcasting, when the beeswax mystery will be revealed in the opening episode of “History Detectives,” season seven.