Wednesday 27 October 2010

Beeswax Candles

The honeybees harvest nectar from flowers, return to the hive with this sweet floral essesence and concentrate it into honey.

The Honeybees consumes the honey and with their wax glands on the sides of their bodies they transform the honey into wax scales.

Workers around 6-12 days old can produce wax scales in their four pairs of wax glands. The glands are concealed between the inter-segmental membranes, but the wax scales produced can be seen, usually even with naked eyes. The scales are thin and quite clear. After workers chew them up and add saliva, it becomes more whitish.

These wax scales are used by the honeybees to make honeycombs to store their honey in.

The beekeepers harvest this honey and during the extracting process the cappings (the ends of the hexagonal cells) are cut or scraped off allowing the honey to come out.

These cappings are melted, cleaned from debris and formed into bulk beeswax.

The candlemaker refines this wax and crafts it into beautiful candles.

*Do the candles have the same smell/ odor as Honey? maybe use wax samples on advertisements for what the honey smells like?

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