What Colour Beeswax is Best?

What colour of beeswax is best? Well, ultimately it depends upon your personal preference. The colour of the wax depends upon which part of the hive it came from and how much of the natural credentials you are prepared to sacrifice, if at all.

Beswax is a wonderful odourless non-toxic substance naturally made by bees. We all know that. We’ve used it for at least 8,000 years in our homes, our food and our medicines. We used to understand it far better, it was a feature of all our lives, but with the advent of cheaper petroleum based alternatives it fell from prominence. Ask someone to describe beeswax and they’ll likely say that it’s yellow, but in fact it comes in a range of colours.

In truth, all beeswax is made white, anything else then has been dyed in some way, natural or otherwise. When a young bee is about 12 days old, they begin to produce waxy plates from glands between their abdominal segments. This pure wax is the most beautiful translucent white and, if you were to take it from them at that point, before it has contained brood or honey, you can make the most amazing white candles and potions. There isn’t much of this white wax in a hive however, as it is very quickly deployed, consequently if you’re offered white beeswax, you should ask questions.

Beekeepers collect surplus or abandoned wax from hives throughout the active year and they clean it, using steam or hot water, to separate the wax from any contaminants. Then, if there is enough, they use it or sell it. It might surprise you to hear that beeswax is actually worth more to a beekeeper than honey.

But wax is wax right? Well no, there are several ‘types’ of wax generally denoted by their colour. But, that is not the whole picture:

• White Beeswax: This is either a) newly created and unused was or b) Yellow Wax which has been heavily filtered and subjected to a bleaching process. Neither of these products will smell of honey because it has either never held it or the honey scent has been removed.
• Yellow Beeswax: Something of a misnomer as it is not always yellow, Yellow Wax either comes from above the Queen Excluder (a metal or plastic grid used to ban the queen from laying eggs in the honey boxes) or below it, in the Brood Box, where young are raised. Consequently this wax takes on the colours of the substances it was contact with, so (cappings) wax from above the queen excluder takes on the mellow yellows of the honey and, occasionally pollen, it was in contact with. Wax from below the Queen Excluder takes on the yellows of the above plus the reds and browns of the propolis (an antibacterial glue made from tree sap) that nurse bees use to coat brood chambers in order to prepare them for re-use.
• Beeswax Absolute: A liquid made by dissolving Yellow Wax in alcohol. (Used in the perfume industry).

So, if like us, you occasionally make candles from your beeswax, which wax do you use? Well, we don’t make or use bleached wax at all and we wouldn’t recommend that you do. What would be the point, it’s not a natural product any more? Neither do we use much of the pure White Wax that the bees haven’t yet used for the simple reason that there isn’t very much of it. The most sought-after beeswax, but not necessarily the best or most aesthetically pleasing, is perhaps the Yellow Wax made from the cappings of honey box frames. This produces the classic yellow candle that smells of honey when you burn it.

But, we don’t turn our noses up at the delicious milky coffee coloured wax that our steamer produces from brood frame wax either. This wax smells of propolis and honey and life and the candles it produces are equally lovely. We find that customers are just as happy with either, whether they burn them or keep them as ornaments. Sometimes, from whimsy, we even add a tint of colour to our coffee coloured wax as  the results are often striking.

But, whatever we do, we only work with sustainable local wax and that’s important.