Just as the bees make it possible for flowers to bloom, the wax they create also blooms over time. This white dusting, referred to as bloom, appears on all 100% pure beeswax, as the natural oils rise to the surface. Some people love the vintage look of a bloomed beeswax candle, while others like their candles to shine. If you want a glossy beeswax candle, just take a soft cloth and wipe away the bloom.
Pure beeswax gives itself away three ways: it smells softly of honey and nothing else, it burns with a slow, bright golden flame, and - given time and a cool room - it blooms.
Beeswax is the only candle wax made by animals instead of extracted from plants or refined from petroleum. Beeswax is the most natural and expensive wax you can buy. Beeswax doesn't require chemical processing, preservatives or UV stabilizers. The only thing you need to make beeswax is bees.
Because beeswax is so expensive for candle-makers to purchase, they may use less expensive waxes to blend with their beeswax. Blending beeswax is fine as long as the candle-maker is ethical and tells their customers that they are selling a beeswax blend. Sometimes candle-makers will also blend their beeswax with another type of wax because they want to add artificial fragrances to their candles. Again, this is fine as long as the candle-maker informs their customers. You should not be paying top dollar for 100% pure beeswax if that is not what you are getting.
If you'd rather skip the guesswork entirely: every candle we make is one ingredient - 100% pure Pacific Northwest beeswax, never blended, never scented from a bottle. What you smell is honey. What you see is a slow, bright golden flame. The bloom will come in its own time - you don't need to wait for it to know what you're holding.
See the one-ingredient candles โ
If you are looking for 100% pure beeswax candles due to allergies, sensitivities to perfumes, or upper respiratory issues, then buy your candles from candle companies that sell 100% pure beeswax. Be careful buying candles that are just listed as "beeswax" because those could very well be blended with other waxes and an artificial honey fragrance added.
So how does "bloom" fit into all of this?
Only 100% pure beeswax candles will bloom. If a candle has spent months in a cool room and never shown a trace of bloom, that's a fair reason to wonder what's really in it. Bloom keeps its own calendar - it loves the cold. In a cool room it can appear within days; in a warm summer room the same candle may take months. Here at Big Moon Beeswax, candles bloom in our studio within days in the cooler months. And you don't have to wait for it - bloom most often shows up on the candles waiting their turn while you're busy burning the first ones.
So next time you buy a beeswax candle and it blooms like a flower, thank the bees and your candle-maker for providing you with 100% pure beeswax.
And if you're switching your home over to candles you don't have to second-guess, start with our candles for a clean home- every ingredient is on the page, because there are only two.
Bee Cozy
