Why Do Natural Beeswax Candles Vary in Color?
We’re often asked why our natural beeswax candles vary slightly in color from batch to batch. It’s a great question, and we have a fantastic answer—one we hope will help you better appreciate how natural beeswax candles are made.
Mother Nature does a remarkable job of supplying consistency in the word around us, but natural variations can make the sky, water, earth, plants, animals, and even humans more beautiful. Over time, however, we’ve grown accustomed to our cookie-cutter society where every product we purchase is an exact copy of the one that came before it. So these natural variants may no longer seem, well, “natural” to us.
The truth is that the color variances among natural beeswax candles can be an indicator of how pure the candles are. And that’s a beautiful thing!
Bees follow an impressively precise process when making beeswax, but the natural variants in the plants and flowers around them means no two batches look the same. The color variants are introduced into the beeswax as honeybees mix wax with pollen, a touch of honey, enzymes and something called propolis, which derives from a resin made of bark, leaf buds and other plant pieces. The mixture is what gives beeswax its hearty, sticky structure and natural beeswax candles their delightful honey color (and smell!). The variants in the color reflect the makeup of the pollen, honey, and propolis in that moment.
We get our hands on raw beeswax from our favorite beekeepers, the colors can vary greatly—from dark brown to buttercup yellow. We temper those variations by carefully selecting the blocks we melt together and by filtering the beeswax (down to the size of a grain of pollen), siphoning off impurities as we go.
This process creates a relatively uniform color, but variants between batches will still occur. To completely transform the color of natural beeswax candles, we would need to add chemicals like bleaching agents or mix the beeswax with paraffin or another impurity, which is something we simply won’t do. We believe 100% pure beeswax candles are best, and that means giving up some control to Mother Nature.
The same is true for how natural beeswax candles smell. The scent varies depending on the types of pollen and plant materials the honeybees access on a particular day. You can expect a warm, comforting honey scent each time, but the exact scent and its natural undertones may vary. It’s those tiny little variants that give natural beeswax candles a unique and treasured advantage over other candles. If you love that about beeswax as much as we do, share your pictures with us on Facebook and Instagram!