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Burning Beeswax Candles

  a high and cheery flame

Beeswax candles should always burn with a high and cheery flame. After all, that's why we burn candles - for light, for ambience, and to act as a bit of an air freshener. It does take a little bit of effort to keep them burning well, but it's worth it.

There are three different ways that beeswax candles burn. Tapers burn straight down, pillars create a wax pool to feed the wick, and tea lights and votives liquefy the wax entirely. Each requires slightly different attention.

a pillar

This pillar has been burning for about 3 hours and you can clearly see the wax pool that has been melted. The self-trimming wick does this by bending over slightly and letting the top of the wick lean out of the centre of the flame where it is burned off. This lean also means that the wax pool is not always centred in the pillar and has to be managed.

You can do this by gently squeezing the thicker rim in towards the centre. You can do this when the candle is burning if you will risk the possibility of hot wax cascading down the candle. It's safer and easier to wait for a few minutes after the candle has been extinguished but while the candle walls are still warm. You just want to bring the wide walls in a little bit so that when the candles burns again it will melt the wide walls into the wax pool and no wax will be wasted.

If you lose control of the candle and you are left with a high and wide wall you can cut the walls off all the way around. You can save the wax that has been cut off and feed it in small pieces into the wax pool another time when the candle is burning well.

The best way to extinguish a pillar candle is to use an opened paper clip or a matchstick to push the wick down in to the wax pool and then lift it back up again. This not only puts out the flame but it also loads the wick with wax for the next lighting. Without loading up the wick it is quite possible that when the candle is lit another time it may burn away all of the cotton wick before it gets hot enough to melt enough wax to feed the flame. This works with tea lights and votives also although when the candle is low you have to be careful not to loosen up the wick.

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Contact Us | Working with Beeswax | Burning Beeswax Candles