Beeswax Candles

Most people are familiar with the lovely ambiance of a burning beeswax candle. Aside from pure enjoyment, there are other reasons that should make beeswax your candle of choice.

There is the beautiful soft light and delicate fragrance exclusive to a beeswax candle. But, on a more practical note … a beeswax candle will burn longer, hotter and burns negative ions. This means it is literally cleaning the air you breathe. Paraffin candles, by the way, are a petroleum product.

History

Beeswax candles have a long and important history with humans. The Egyptians are given credit for the very first beeswax candle, and this around 3000 BC. Through many thousands of years it remained the cleanest, and most pleasant smelling, source of light.

Wax Production – a honey bee’s perspective

Wax flakes on a worker bee's abdomen

The important job of wax production falls to, of course, the amazing worker bee. At some point during her first three weeks in the hive as a house bee she will produce wax. She has eight glands on her abdomen (last part of her body) that produce very thin pieces of wax.

Capped and uncapped honey comb

Comb hanging from a frame

Obviously bees are pretty happy with a dark hive and do not require wax for candles and light. Wax for them is the perfect storage solution. They use the paper-thin pieces of wax to make comb. Comb is beeswax shaped into perfect hexagon cells. These cells are used to store honey, pollen and propolis, or used by the queen to lay eggs.

Bee chain hanging from frame on left

Like everything in a beehive, it’s a community affair and building comb is no exception. A bee chain is created. The wax producing bees hand the wax pieces to the construction bees. Construction bees chew, soften and shape the wax. It is then handed to the engineer bees that place the wax to create those amazing, perfect hexagons.

Comb with a couple layers

A look down at some tunnels

Some engineer honey bees tend to be a little more artistic and design some beautiful comb structures! Since worker bees are all female … they like to coordinate the color of wax. A light colored cell will receive a light colored cap, and a dark colored cell will receive a dark colored cap. Makes perfectly good sense to me!

Wax Production – a beekeeper’s perspective

Beekeepers generally only harvest the wax caps (or cappings) that were cut off the frames to allow the honey to be spun out. The rest of the wax cells are left on the wooden frame/plastic foundation and stored for next year. This way, the bees can do a little cell repair work and put their time and energy into filling the cells with honey.

Sticky bits of wax and honey

Cappings are usually a pretty sticky mess of honey and beeswax. A bit of a daunting task to separate, not to mention, extremely messy! The first step is to soak and rinse as much honey off the wax as possible. This is definitely an outside job. Honey is a very good compound if you want to plug drainpipes!

With that accomplished, the wax needs to be filtered. The wax cappings are heated in a solar oven and filtered through paper towel. You are left with a clean, filtered block of beeswax ready to be made in candles.

Finished beeswax candle

This is the fun part! Beeswax should always be melted in a double boiler as it is quite flammable. Once in a liquid state and at the proper temperature, it is poured into a candle mold with a wick and left to dry and harden. Once removed, the wick will be trimmed and it’s ready to enjoy!!

Not only is honey a precious commodity, beeswax is may be even more precious! Wax production is very labor intensive for bees. Honey bees must consume between six to eight pounds of honey in order to produce only one pound of wax!!