Bountiful Beeswax

No creature on earth has done more for human beings than the bee. Indeed without the pollination by bees of fruits, vegetables, berries and flowering grains our food supply would be very limited. Even today, insect pollination produces over 30 percent of all food eaten by humankind. Moreover, many animals raised for food also rely on pollinated plants for their diets.

Beeswax is a remarkable natural substance that science still does not fully understand. It’s a byproduct of honey, which originates in flowers and is made by the youngest honeybees in the colony. These young bees haven’t yet become foragers for the plant nectar that ultimately becomes honey. To produce their wax, the bees gorge themselves on honey and link themselves together by the hundreds, forming living walls. After several hours, the wax begins to flow from pockets on their abdomens. Each bee then scrapes off the wax with her legs and chews it into soft pellets. She then uses these pellets to fashion exquisitely-engineered honeycomb cells, with walls of wax that average only 1/100 inch thick. (Mathematicians have recently proven that the hexagonal honeycomb pattern is the most efficient storage structure ever developed by any species, including humans.)

Light Up Your Life

Burning beeswax produces negative ions that circulate in the room and attract pollutants, in much the same way that a magnet attracts iron filings. Dust, odours, moulds, bacteria, viruses and other toxins are captured and neutralized. Beeswax actually cleans your air!

You can burn beeswax candles in an unventilated room without fear of pollution. In fact, many people report that burning a candle in the bedroom for 30 minutes or so before falling asleep produces a more restful sleep.

Paraffin, on the other hand, is a petroleum waste product, made from the sludge left over from the gasoline and petrochemical refining process. Paraffin produces no negative ions and so adds to the pollutants in your home. People with respiratory problems should not use paraffin candles, nor should people who do not want to develop such problems.

Bees in Peril

In recent years, the massive use of herbicides and insecticides has led to an alarming decline in bee populations in North America and Europe. Biologists are extremely concerned about the fate of this critical link in the ecosystem. Already, shrinking bee populations have caused an annual loss of $6 billion worth of food crops in the US alone–and that number is rising. By using beeswax candles, you encourage the beekeeping industry, ensuring that more crops will be pollinated and more people will be fed. And in doing so, you immediately benefit yourself and your family with cleaner air and more economical light.

Burning paraffin produces toxic combustion by-products, many of which are known to be carcinogens. Breathing the fumes from burning paraffin candles is essentially the same as breathing the exhaust fumes from a diesel engine.