Pure Beeswax Candles – the life story of our beeswax.

Beeswax is made by bees so they can build the honeycomb structures that not only act as their food and pollen storage system, but far more important than that, a place where the Queen Bee can live, lay her eggs, raise their brood.

The beeswax is an amazing material – it is naturally harvested when the bee farmers harvest the honey, honey that can only be surplus to the requirements of the colony.

The female bees produce the wax from glands in their abdomens. This is secreted as a white wax but soon becomes coloured with the thousands of bee footsteps that walk across thousands of flowers collecting pollen and nectar and returning it to the hive.

The wax collected is generally defined by three categories, brood wax – from the area where the queen lives, lays her eggs and the young are raised, the honeycomb wax, where the honey is stored, and the capping wax, the final stage of the honey production where the bee caps the honeycomb.

All waxes are different colours, dependent on the food source, the age of the wax, and the method of cleaning the beeswax.

We try to source our beeswax for our beeswax candles as ethically as possible, but alongside the need to have a pure 100% beeswax for our beeswax candles.

Our first batch of beeswax comes from our own apiaries (only 16 hives), and our good friends, Ian Stiby and Milns - between them they run apiaries that have in excess of 100 hives.

It takes the bee the equivalent of 6-8 lbs of honey to make 1lb of beeswax, and this has no relation to how much beeswax can be gained from one hive, just the amount of energy a bee has to consume to make the wax.

Because of the shift in beeswax being the preferred option for candles (and if you are reading this we all know why) we are unable to source enough beeswax just relying on the South West beekeepers.

Our main aim in making beeswax candles is to ensure that the beeswax used is natural, 100% beeswax.

Many beeswax candles makers use beeswax that has been imported and re-sold as locally filtered beeswax without really knowing the provenance of the beeswax they are buying. Locally filtered beeswax is a mis-nomer, as it is filtered in far flung places like China, and countries that have a perception that it is acceptable to chemically bleach beeswax and re-colour the wax as to make a standard bright yellow beeswax for the beeswax candle market. 

Some of our beeswax we buy from small scale bee farmers in Europe. To ensure the beeswax is what we expect, pure, uncontaminated, these small producers belong to a co-operative where the wax is tested and certificated as pure beeswax before being sold.

The wax is then shipped to us by pallet once a year, and stored by us as blocks, one final filter and made into the purest sweetest smelling quality beeswax candles.