Here at Big Moon Beeswax, we often get questions about cleaning out glass votive holders after your beeswax votive has finished burning. There are several ways to get your glass votive holders clean and ready for your next cozy burn time.
IMPORTANT NOTE! The following information is only describing what our experienced candle-makers do. This method involves the use of hot water, resulting in hot wax and hot glass handling. We are not suggesting others use this method, we are only describing what we do here. This blog post is for informational purposes only and you should clean your glass votive holders in a way that you feel comfortable and safe. We do provide safety precautions when describing what our candle-makers do and the tool they use to prevent damage to the votive glass.
Before we share our methods, let’s answer a question that some people have after burning a pure beeswax votive:
WHY IS THERE LEFTOVER WAX?
- 100% pure beeswax is the hardest of all candle waxes available, so it takes more heat for the wax to melt.
- There are two safety measures built into our beeswax votives to prevent the glass votive holder from cracking:
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- The metal wick tab at the bottom of the votive has a little neck that extinguishes the candle flame when it gets to the top of the metal wick neck. This little wick neck keeps the flame off of the glass votive holder bottom.
- The wick is carefully chosen to give the brightest and longest candle burn without being too hot. The correct wick will provide a clean burn and not produce smoke or soot on the glass.
These two safety measures usually leave a small amount of beeswax at the bottom of the glass votive holder. Softer waxes like paraffin or other blended waxes burn at a lower temperature so they may not leave any wax at the bottom of the glass holder. Pure beeswax will usually leave a small amount of wax because of its hardness and high melt point.
HOW DOES BMB GET THE WAX OUT OF THE GLASS VOTIVE HOLDERS?
Method One: We put the glass holder in the freezer for a day and see if the wax and wick pin pop out easily. If it doesn’t then there is another option we use:
Method Two: We use hot water and a plastic scraper, using the steps below.
- We heat water in a kettle, to just about boiling.
- We line our sink with paper towels so no wax goes down the drain.
- We place votive holders upright in the sink onto the paper towels.
- We pour hot water into each votive holder and wait at least a minute before starting to clean one at a time. (We Do Not pour hot water into cold cups. We wait until the glass holders are at room temperature, to avoid any possibility of cracking.)

TIP: We never use metal to clean out a glass candle holder. It can create scratches that weaken the glass and make it unsafe for future candle burning.
We use a small plastic or wooden spatula (years ago it was chopsticks or popsicle sticks until we found this little plastic scraper that works great at scooping out warm wax.

We place our scraper inside one of the votives and gently tip it over and let the hot water run out onto the paper towels. We let any remaining votive holders continue to soak.
TIME TO BEE CAREFUL! The empty glass votive holder is still hot so we use folded paper towels or something else to protect our hands as we pick up the hot glass holder.

We use a small plastic scraper to clean out the wick tab and softened wax. When we are finished scraping out the wax and wick tab, we wipe out the votive holder with a clean, dry paper towel.
At this point, our glass votive holders look clean and ready for the next use.
If not, we add more hot water and let it sit for another minute and repeat the process.
If you already use hot water to clean out your glass votive holders and are using metal to scrap out the wax, please consider switching to using wood, rubber or plastic as they are safer for the glass.
Whichever way you clean out your glass votive holders, BEE SAFE!