MoonBeam Landing - Tips on Burning Beeswax Candles

What is Beeswax?

Ever wondered where beeswax comes from? It actually is a product derived from a bee hive of one of the various groups of honey bees. Young honey bees at a certain age secrete beeswax as thin scales which are produced by glands located on the stomach surface of their abdomens. These worker bees have eight glands that produce beeswax until the time when they begin to take daily flights. After that, these glands gradually disappear. These scales are removed from their bodies by the young bees who then chew the wax into a palatable form and use this to build honey combs. This is the wax that is collected by beekeepers. Honey combs are built by western honey bees to store their honey and it is where they raise their young. Bee hives normally have a temperature of between 91 to 97 degrees F. or 33 to 36 degrees C in order for the young bees to secrete their honey. It is thought that the average bee flies 150,000 miles in order to accumulate enough pollen to create one pound of honey. Beeswax is in water and resistant to many acids.

A beekeeper extracts honey from the hive by cutting off the wax caps from each honey comb with a knife. The color of the wax depends on the type of flower pollen gathered by the bees. It may vary from white to brown, but mostly it is some shade of yellow. Honey from the honey comb tends to be lighter in color than that gathered from the brood comb which is found in the lower part of the hive. A brood comb is where the queen bee lays her eggs and the new brood is raised by the bee colony. Honey combs tend to surround the brood comb. As a brood comb gets older, it tends to darken in color and is also affected by impurities. Wax that is gathered must be rendered which is done by adding heat either through artificial means, or by creating a hotbed using the sun's rays. Beeswax is used in many products today with only 1/5 of the produced supply being used in candles. Since beeswax has a higher melting point than parafin, it is an excellent natural choice for today's candles with its sweet fragrance.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/w0076e/w0076e12.htm, Dept of Agriculture, Value Added Products from Beekeeping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax, Wikipedia, Beeswax.