MAKING OUR BEESWAX CANDLES:

All of our candles and wax melts are created in our home studio in Stapleford, Nottingham where they are given all the love and attention they need to meet our high standards. A sample of every batch we make is tested to make sure our quality remains 100% and nothing has altered in our production process.

Candle-making is a game of alchemy and determination. Even the slightest change in pouring temperature or dye amount can have a drastic butterfly effect. That's why months of research and countless tests and revisions go into each individual recipe until we are happy with the fragrance, burn time, and overall aesthetic.

Family-sourced

Back in 2015, my parents moved to Powys, Wales to start their retirement.

Unable to sit down and relax for even 5 minutes, Dad (Alan) started researching beekeeping. Now, 8 years later (2023), he has passed British Bee Keeping Asociation modules 1, 2, 3, and 5, making him an Intermediate Beekeeper. He is working towards becoming a Master Beekeeper. Fun fact: there is no module 4 as it has been removed by the BBKA.

Whenever we visit, he loves to show off his collection of 8 hives and keep us up to date with what he's been doing to care for the bees. We've been lucky enough to not only source our beeswax from a professional who takes great care of his bees, but also be able to see and take part in the process of extracting honey and wax.

It's also special to have another subject my Dad and I can geek out about and bond over. ❤

How it's made

Forager bees bring nectar back to the hive where it is passed from bee to bee to reduce water content and become honey.

Worker bees convert the honey to beeswax. They do this by raising the temperature in the hive to enable their wax glands to convert the sugar in the honey to beeswax. This beeswax then oozes through pores on their abdomen, forming small scales. The bees chew the beeswax scales, turning them into the correct consistency to form their iconic honeycomb.

To make 1 kilogram of beeswax, bees need to ingest 6-8 kilograms of honey, visiting an incredible 60 million flowers.

Inside the hive

Now for our process:

With the aid of the smoker which drives the bees deeper into the hive, Alan is able to access the frames, which you can see him holding in the image to the left. The bees store their honey by sealing the combs with more wax - known as cappings, which is the best quality of beeswax.

Once gently cleared of bees, the frames are carried back to his and Mum's home where they begin the next step.

Making a mess

Usually at this point, Mum (Carol) takes over and scrapes the cappings from the frames. But this time I got to have a go. It's easily the messiest and stickiest part of the process as the cappings become coated in the now-exposed honey.

Cappings beeswax is the best quality beeswax and what we concentrate on collecting.

Once scraped from the frames, the cappings wax is left in the bucket for a couple of days to drain as much honey as possible. It is then placed outside in a sheltered area for the bees to harvest the last morsel of honey. This not only cleans it for us for use in the next stage but enables the bees to back some of their honey to the hive.

Runny honey

For those curious about the honey:

The prepared frames are loaded into the extractor. Once full, the extractor spins the frames until the honey is flung onto the sides of the machine like sweet-smelling rain. The honey then flows through the spout at the bottom of the extractor into a filtered bucket.

When drained, the honey is then heated to 65°C for 1hr which keeps it runny for 6 months.

It's then bottled up into labelled jars by my parents, ready for consumption.

Back home...

The next stages of the process are handled by me and Josh back in Nottingham.

Josh built his own filter which separates most of the undesirables from the beeswax. If we have honeycomb wax rather than cappings, he will filter the wax twice for me.

(Please ignore the state of the garden - we are midway through renovations!)

White gold

Now the wax is brought inside for me to filter more finely. The purer and cleaner the wax is, the smoother it burns as candles, so I filter it at least thrice.

Once filtered to my satisfaction, I pour the molten wax into a simple mould to set. Having small bars of beeswax is much easier for me to re-melt once I want to make more beeswax candles.

Wick testing

When first making our beeswax candles, we had to figure out which wick type and size would work best with them. Thankfully, this shape wasn't too tricky and we found our best wick fairly quickly. Then I perform two types of tests:

1) how it's meant to be burnt (2 hours at a time)

2) used and abused (never extinguished).

This type of testing ensures the candle will be safe no matter the level of care and attention it receives.