The Beeswax Workshop: How to Make Your Own Natural Candles, Cosmetics, Cleaners, Soaps, Healing Balms and More

INTRODUCTION

Beeswax is woven into my story. It pleasantly scents my home, gives me something useful to make for the craft markets, textures and preserves my herbal remedies, waterproofs my garden equipment, and lights my Friday nights with its sweet, golden light.

It began when my husband, two sons, and I stopped at an open-air, agritourism market because we saw the sign Planet Bee on the highway. It was impromptu. The boys were hot and restless. We all needed a break from driving. The sign promised ice cream and bathrooms.

At Planet Bee, a honey farm and shop in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, we watched as a beekeeper, dressed in a short-sleeve white shirt without any other protective clothing, pulled a frame covered in bees out of a wooden box. They flew around him on stage and crawled on his bare hands as he explained to the audience the gentle nature of bees. We didn’t need to be afraid of them. He asked us not to run from them and not to swat at them if any accidentally landed on us during the demonstration. He said if a bee stung us, it would release a pheromone that would tell the other bees to come and sting us, too. However, the bees did not want to sting.

He moved slowly, deliberately, as he told us about how the bees pollinated the Okanagan fruit crop. Without the bees there would be no peaches, apples, apricots, or cherries. My youngest son, just six, watched with toothless rapture. The nine year old was eager to try the honey samples.

After the show we wandered around the store. I found a replica colonial tin mold for making taper candles. It was a decor piece, not actually meant to be used as a mold. There was no wax or wicks on the market shelves, and no books on how to make candles. I asked the girl behind the counter if they had any beeswax. She shrugged and left to get the beekeeper. He told me he only had big, 30-pound blocks of beeswax. One cost $150, but he’d let me have it for $130 if I took the whole block. Sure, I said.

He led me to a back room. The golden beeswax was like a wheel of cheese, from which I learned how to slice off pieces of wax on the spot using an ax. After that, I was on my own with a tin candle mold and a 30-pound stash of beeswax. It was 1991.

By that November I had made my first beeswax candles, after several failures. At Christmas, everyone over nineteen received beeswax candles and homemade soap. Beeswax and I were officially in a relationship.

Twenty-five years later, I’m buying 5 pounds of beeswax annually from a local beekeeper. The price has risen about 40 percent in that time. I now use it for many more things around our home and garden. In this book I share my personal recipes for everything from candles to cosmetics, cleaning supplies to art supplies, and even useful preparations for the household and for sports activities.

Beeswax replaces many of the toxic, petroleum-based products you may now be using. It is useful as a protectant, lubricant, and stabilizer. It can be either solid or malleable depending on the temperature. It improves the texture of other products. In health preparations and cosmetics, beeswax is a humectant and moisturizer. It is antimicrobial and rich in vitamin A, with trace amounts of pollen and propolis, the tree resins collected by honeybees. When it burns as a candle, beeswax combats indoor air pollution by releasing negative ions into the air, refreshing it with its sweet honey scent.

Chapter 1

MIRACULOUS BEESWAX

There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, which touches perfection. No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the center of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were someone from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.

—Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee (1924)

The Honeybee

Several different kinds of bees, including bumblebees, produce a waxy substance, but beeswax, as we know it, is produced by the western honeybee (Apis mellifera) to enclose their brood and their winter food. The wax is made by four pairs of wax glands on the abdomens of 12-day-old daughter bees. These wax glands function efficiently for just five days. During this time, the wax glands exude thin wax scales that are manipulated by the bees to build the hexagon-shaped cells that make up the honeycomb.

The honeycomb is a feat of miraculous engineering. When left to design their own hive structure, honeybees will fit each hexagon tightly with the other hexagons in a pattern that forms a womb-like structure. The cells of the hive are used both for brood cells and for honey storage. During wax production, the daughter bees must consume 6 to 8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. That 1 pound of wax will hold 22 pounds of honey efficiently.

The average yield of honey and wax is dependent on a lot of factors, including the size of the colony, available forage, and the ancestry of the honeybees. A single colony can produce 300 pounds of honey and 15 pounds of wax in a single season. However, much of that is used by the bees themselves to raise their brood and survive the winter. In a good year, the beekeeper may be able to harvest 30 to 80 pounds of honey and just 1 or 2 pounds of wax from one colony. In a poor year, the bees need all their honey to survive the winter.

How Do Bees Make Beeswax?

While some people speak of the hive as if it is a political entity, I like to think of it as a family. Every bee is the son or daughter of the same mother, and each bee has a job to do. The male bees, or drones, have only one task: to mate with a queen bee and produce more daughters. The daughters carry on all the age-appropriate household duties, gaining more responsibilities as they mature.

The first job of a new daughter bee is to clean her room. If her brood cell isn’t cleaned well enough, the mother bee sends her back to clean it again. Once her own brood cell is clean, she learns how to keep the hive clean and warm. By the time she is three days old, she is ready to babysit the older larvae in the hive. After she’s mastered this job, she moves on to taking care of the youngest larvae, preparing their food, and feeding them.

By the time she’s twelve days old, she is producing wax scales, building comb, carrying food, storing food for winter, and making the medicine needed by the other bees to keep them healthy and strong. When these young daughters are 18 to 20 days old, they are promoted to guard status. Their job is to protect the hive from intruders. They are ready to give up their lives for the protection of their family. After just three days as guards, they graduate to full worker bee status. From this point on, these daughters will leave the hive at dawn to forage for food for the colony, returning several times a day with nectar and pollen.

Bees aren’t union workers with only one job, though. If at any time the clan requires a job done and there are not sufficient bees of the right age to do it, the older daughters pick up the slack to help the colony survive, just like in a family. Foraging bees are capable of making wax in their atrophied wax glands. If necessary, these older daughters can make food and medicine, keep the hive temperature stable, seal the drafts, and clean.

Colony Collapse Disorder

You’ve probably heard of colony collapse disorder. Honey bee populations worldwide reached a critical low point in 2007, with entire colonies dying off during the winter of 2006–2007. As I write this, many countries are showing honeybees in recovery after 10 years of concentrated efforts to establish habitat and reduce pesticide use.

The key pesticides blamed for the decline in the western honeybee and wild bee populations are neonicotinoid pesticides. Neonicotinoid pesticides are used to treat the seeds of plants to protect against insect damage, which leads to crop loss. Neonicotinoid pesticides are systemic pesticides. When seeds are treated with neonicotinoids, every cell of the growing plant is pesticide laden, including the pollen and nectar. When bees forage these plants, individual bees are poisoned. These bees bring the nectar from these plants back to the hive. Many of these forager bees die from exposure to neonicotinoids.

In some cases, the hive is able to recover from the devastating loss of forager bees by hatching more female worker bees. However, the neonicotinoid-laced nectar is stored in the colony as honey and is consumed by the colony during the winter months, leading to colony collapse disorder. Further, neonicotinoids harm the reproductive capacity of male bees, reducing the lifespan of drones and damaging sperm viability. This further weakens bee colonies.

The EU placed a ban on neonicotinoid use in 2013. Research is ongoing in Europe.

In the United States, the EPA and the Department of Agriculture are researching the connection between bee deaths and neonicotinoid use. However, their results will not be released until 2018. In 2016, Maryland and Connecticut became the first states to ban consumer use of neonicotinoids. Agricultural, horticultural, and veterinary use of the pesticides is still permitted.

What Can You Do?

There are a few things you can do to help the bees.

Plant nectar-producing plants, with the bees in mind. One of the factors in the decline of pollinators is the loss of habitat to development. As more people consciously plant masses of flowering, nectar-producing plants that bloom over a long season, the bees will have more opportunities to make the nectar and the medicine that they need to strengthen the colony.

Bees forage one kind of plant at a time. If the bees are foraging kale plants, they will continue foraging kale and ignore other flowers that are open nearby. By planting masses of one type of flower, the bees have more opportunities to feed and to gather.

Grow an organic garden. By growing food organically, you will avoid the use of pesticides. This gives the bees a safe place to forage. It also increases awareness of the pollinators and their health. Gardeners need pollinators.

Adopt a beehive. Last summer I saw beekeeping equipment for the first time in a local Home Hardware store. There were beehives, protective clothing, smokers, and books on beekeeping for sale. Before the Industrial Revolution, keeping bees was a normal activity for gardeners. Gardeners kept a hive or two in the back garden to supply honey and wax, and to pollinate the fruit trees. Today, even city dwellers are adopting beehives and learning about honeybee husbandry. The information that beginning beekeepers need is more accessible than it used to be. Talk to a local beekeeper about adopting a hive with bees that are already acclimatized to your local area.

Buy local honey and wax. Not everyone can adopt a beehive. If you can’t, buy local honey and wax directly from the beekeeper. This helps your local economy. It lets the beekeeper know that there is a market for her inventory. It encourages her to keep going.

Beeswax Basics

There are different kinds and qualities of wax. Freshly made beeswax is white. Golden beeswax gets its color from the pollen and honey stored in the wax comb. Here’s more on the various kinds of wax you might encounter:

Brood wax. This is a very dark wax melted from comb that was previously used to hold bee larvae. Some beekeepers reuse the same wax foundation over and over in order to save the bees’ energy and honey. When bees have to build honeycomb before they can lay eggs, it takes longer to get the colony growing in the spring. But when the wax is reused over and over, it becomes dark with propolis, honey, and bee gunk. This older wax is the lowest quality. You’ll need to render it by melting it down with a bit of water to let the impurities sink out of the wax before you can use it for the recipes in this book. There will be a lot of waste.

Honeycomb with the honey still in it is sometimes sold in the market. The wax comb is meant to be eaten with the honey as a delicacy. In a jar of honey with the comb, the comb represents a very small portion of the jar. To separate the wax from the honey, cut the comb with a knife to open all the honey cells. Strain the honey from the comb. Then, render the wax in a large quantity of water. The impurities, the honey, and the propolis will drop to the bottom of the pan. The wax will float on top and can be skimmed off.

Capping wax. This is the most common wax you’ll encounter. It is the first rendered wax from the beekeeper. Capping wax should be rendered one more time, without water, before you use it to make candles, cosmetics, or apothecary items. It is golden wax, but may have a trace amount of residual honey, bee parts, or dirt embedded in the wax. I find that melting a block of capping wax in my wax pot and keeping it warm for an hour to let the junk settle allows me to separate the cleaned yellow wax from the gunk at the bottom of the container. Just pour off the top layer of yellow wax into silicone molds, and pour off the darker, gunky wax into its own mold and save it for recipes that call for waste wax.

Cleaned yellow beeswax. This is cosmetic-grade beeswax, cleaned of all residual honey, bee parts, and propolis. It’s ready to use for any of the recipes in this book. This is the grade of wax you’ll need for candlemaking. Expect to pay more for cleaned beeswax than you would for capping wax.

White filtered beeswax. This beeswax has been filtered of all honey and bee parts. It’s been bleached either by exposure to UV light or by filtering through a carbon filter. This is the best grade of wax to use when making art supplies; colored wax will shift the colors, making them less bright. White beeswax often lacks the characteristic honey scent associated with 100 percent beeswax. Expect to pay more for white filtered beeswax than you would for cleaned yellow beeswax.

Left to right: Cleaned yellow beeswax, capping wax, pastilles, honeycomb

Working with Blocks of Wax

Large blocks of wax are difficult to work with. While the beekeeper suggested I chip off pieces of the wax cheese with an axe, this is neither a safe nor effective process. Solid wax is hard and doesn’t give way to chipping without protest. If you must deal with a large block of wax, melt it in a pot over low heat.

Wax is flammable, though—it will spontaneously burst into flames at 400°F, the flash point of beeswax. You only need to get it between 140°F and 147°F, the point at which beeswax melts. It will discolor at 185°F. Using a double boiler to melt wax ensures that the temperature remains below the critical point. Even when using a double boiler, never leave a pot of melting wax unattended.

If you encounter a wax fire, do not throw water on it. Wax fires, like grease fires, will explode as water droplets evaporate when they hit the wax. This could send a rolling fireball into the air. Instead, smother a wax fire using sand, salt, a fire extinguisher, or a wool blanket.

Caution: Do not melt wax with young children or pets in the room. Keep pot handles turned to the back of the stove at all times so that children don’t tip a pot of hot wax on themselves because they wanted to see what was in it. If you spill any on your skin, remove the wax immediately and run your skin under the cold water tap. Aloe vera gel will help cool a minor burn quickly. For more serious burns, consult your medical professional.

Blocks of beeswax weighing less than 3 pounds can be melted in a can placed inside a large pot, like a soup pot or pasta pot. Fill the large pot with water so that it comes at least halfway up the can. Simmer over medium heat. This is a makeshift double boiler.

I find it easier to melt larger blocks of wax in this way, using a tin can inside a large pot. Once beeswax blocks are fully melted, any impurities will drop out of the wax to the bottom of the can. I pour the cleaned, rendered wax into smaller 1-, 2-, and 4-ounce blocks. Silicone molds are easiest to use for this. Several sizes are available. See the Resource section on page 184 for sources of molds.

Ingredients with a higher melting point should be melted before adding beeswax to the recipe to avoid damaging the crystalline structure of beeswax with high heat. This chart lists the melting points for several waxes and resins.

If you are using a hard plastic mold, spray it with food-grade silicone spray before filling it with beeswax. This saves a lot of frustration when you go to unmold it.

To use the blocks of wax for any of the recipes in this book, assume 1 tablespoon of beeswax weighs 12 grams. Weigh the block of wax on a kitchen scale to determine the volume.

Beeswax pastilles, or pellets, are sold in 1-pound packages. They are higher priced than blocks of beeswax. They don’t require melting before you measure them, saving you time. They come in both yellow/beige beeswax and white beeswax. The colored beeswax has the sweet honey scent; white beeswax is odorless. To measure the beeswax pastilles, press the beeswax in your fingers and into the spoon, causing the wax to stick together and form a solid clump.

The recipes in this book are written using volume measurements. When working with solid blocks of beeswax, it’s sometimes easier to measure beeswax by weight. Use this chart to convert your beeswax from weight measurement to volume measurement.

Cleaning Up Wax

Pliable, malleable, sticky, hard when cold—the characteristics of beeswax that make it desirable for making stuff are the same characteristics that make it hard to clean up. As I write this, there is a 3-inch circle of beeswax splattered on the floor beside my stove. It’s collecting gritty dirt. By the time you read this, it will have been cleaned up, I promise.

Lay down newspaper or parchment paper in your work area to catch wax drips. It will make clean up easier. I use an old sheet as a drop sheet when I’m making dipped candles to avoid those splotches on the vinyl floor.

Spilled wax can be cleaned up off the floor or counters by applying ice cubes to the wax because beeswax becomes brittle at freezing temperatures. You’ll be able to scrape the residual wax up with a blunt knife once it’s been iced for a few minutes. Often, spilled wax will lift off smooth countertops, stove tops, and sinks without scraping.

When cleaning up the dishes after doing one of the projects in this book, wipe out the containers, spoons, and pots of residual wax with a paper towel. You can discard the towel in your compost bucket. Beeswax is biodegradable, as are all the ingredients in these recipes. Once the residual wax is removed, wash the dish in hot, soapy water.

Glass measuring cups can be immersed in the simmering water that you used for melting the beeswax. Avoid burning yourself when you do this. I usually let them get cool enough to pick them up without burning my hands. The wax inside them should still be soft, so it can be easily wiped off. Once the residual wax is wiped away, the glasses and tins clean easily with dishwashing liquid.

Wax is difficult to get out of metal pots, so you’ll be happier if you have a pot that is reserved for melting beeswax. Garage sales and thrift stores are good places to find suitable pots. You might even luck out and find a double boiler for a cheap price.

Under no circumstance should you pour beeswax down the drain.