Our Story
We are why Beeswax Works
There is a moment, most evenings, when someone strikes a match and the room changes.
That is the whole business, really. Everything we do is in service of that moment happening in your home instead of ours.
Three words sit on our logo: Pure ~ Simple ~ Light. They are not a slogan we bought. They are a fair description of the wax we use, the way we work, and what you get for it.
One vision, three owners
Beeswax Works has had three owners since 1994, and only ever one idea.
Richard began it in 1994. He hand-dipped tapers and hand-poured pillars on the west coast of British Columbia. Small batches, traditional chandlery, pure beeswax and cotton wick.
Jill carried it from 2012. A chance conversation in a garden turned into a chandler's apprenticeship. Jill Smith and her partner Bruce learned the old skills from Richard himself, and what began as a plan for a quieter life became a working candle room. Trading then as Bees Wax Works, they grew it over a decade from Salt Spring Island to Ladysmith, rooted in the artisan and homesteading culture of the coast.
It was shared with me in 2023. I met Jill in 2021 through a wholesale order. I kept bees; I wanted to learn wax. When Jill and Bruce were ready for quieter days of their own, I took the business on in July 2023 and brought it over the mountains to Revelstoke.
Richard's vision was passed to Jill and then shared with me. Three owners have each changed where the candles are made. Not one of us has changed how, or why.
Older than the light switch
Beeswax was one of the first materials people made candles from, and one of the longest serving. Long before electricity, households, churches and workshops across many cultures lit their evenings with it, because it burned cleanly and steadily and because the bees kept making more of it.
Hand-dipping and hand-pouring are the methods those candles were made by. They are the methods we still use. A taper is built by dipping a wick over and over and letting each layer cool, which is slow and unglamorous and has never been improved on for the kind of candle we want to make.
So when we talk about tradition, we do not mean a look. We mean the actual craft: old methods, kept because they work, and the values that tend to travel with them — do the job properly, buy from people you know, waste nothing, keep your word, and make something that lasts longer than the sale.
Why we do this
We inherited this, none of us invented it, and the job is to hand it on in better shape than we found it.
So our purpose is straightforward. Keep making candles by hand. Keep buying beeswax from Canadian beekeepers. Keep choosing the better material over the cheaper one. And build something durable enough that someone is still doing this in another thirty years.
A beeswax candle burns slowly and gives light for a long time. That is the product, and it is more or less the plan.
Made by a beekeeper
Most candle makers buy wax. I have kept bees commercially since 2013, and founded BeeKind Honey Bees in 2019 before taking on Beeswax Works.
It changes what you notice. Years in the field teach you what good cappings wax looks like, how a poor season shows up in a batch, which beekeepers are meticulous and which are not, and why wax from one apiary behaves differently in a mould than wax from another.
We buy our beeswax from Canadian beekeepers because we know what we are looking at, and because we know the people producing it. It is not the cheapest wax available. It is the wax we would burn in our own home.
Pure
Pure refers to the wax. That is the literal meaning and the one we care about most.
Our candles are made of pure beeswax and a cotton wick. Nothing is added to bulk the wax out, colour it, or cover it up: no paraffin blend, no filler, no dye. The colour is the wax's own, running from deep honey to pale gold depending on the season and the forage available to the bees. The scent is the wax's own too, faint and warm, and it comes from the hive rather than from a bottle.
Our wax is mostly cappings wax — the seal bees build over full honey cells, collected during honey extraction from producers across Alberta and British Columbia, then rendered down. It is the kind of beeswax we prefer to work with, and it is why our candles are gold without anything being added.
It comes from Canadian beekeepers. Not from an importer, not from an out-of-country substitute, and we are not looking for a cheaper country to buy from.
Why the gold shifts a little. Beeswax is natural chemistry, made by honey bee biology, and it carries whatever the bees were working that season. When the forage in a harvest changes, the hue of the wax changes with it, sometimes deeper, sometimes lighter. We work with a single bulk supplier precisely so that we can keep that variation narrow and our candles dependable from one order to the next. But we are not going to bleach it flat to make every candle identical. A small shift in the gold is the honest signature of a natural product, and we would rather you knew what it was than wondered.
About bloom. Over time a pure beeswax candle may develop a soft, pale film across its surface. This is bloom, and it is the wax's natural patina rising to the outside. It is a mark of pure beeswax rather than a fault, and it is one of the few things that is genuinely hard to fake. We do not treat our candles to prevent it and we do not hide it — we are rather pleased to see it. Some people polish it away and some leave it be. We would encourage you to leave it, and either way the candle burns exactly the same.
Simple
We make our candles ourselves.
Raw beeswax and wicking come into the studio in Revelstoke, and candles go out. We dip the tapers, pour the pillars, set the tea lights and votives, and pack the boxes. We do not buy finished candles and put our name on them — making them is the specialty, and it is the part we are not willing to hand to anyone else.
We make to order rather than to a warehouse, which is why our year has a shape: quiet through spring, busy from August, flat out by November. Your candle was poured recently, by hand, by us.
Simple is also why we keep the range honest about shape and use. A taper wants a holder that grips it and sits level. A pillar is happier on a tray that catches what it gives back. A tea light belongs in a cup. That is partly about safety, partly about not scrubbing wax off furniture, and partly about how you like a room to look — and those are your decisions, not ours. As we add accessories to sit alongside the candles, some will begin as pieces we have sourced rather than made, while we work toward making our own. We will always tell you which is which.
Light
Pure beeswax burns clean and burns slowly, down and steady, rather than pooling and drowning its own wick. Kept trimmed, it gives very little smoke or soot. Burn times vary by shape and size, so you will find an estimate on each candle's own page.
A beeswax candle will repay a little attention, and most of the value people miss is lost to four small habits:
- Give it a long first burn. The first light sets the pattern for every one after it. Burn it long enough for the melt pool to reach the full width of the candle, and it will keep burning to its edges for the rest of its life. Cut the first burn short and it will tunnel.
- Trim the wick to about a quarter inch, every time. Before each light, not occasionally. A long wick is the cause of nearly every smoking, sooting, oversized flame.
- Keep it out of the draft. A calm flame burns evenly and cleanly. A flickering flame is a draft telling you it is wasting your candle down one side.
- Keep an eye on it. Never leave a burning candle unattended, keep it clear of anything that can catch, and out of reach of children and pets.
Do that and the candle lasts longer than you expect. Put two candles side by side and the cheaper one usually wins on the shelf and loses in the room: it burns faster, it burns out, and you buy it again. Beeswax costs more once and gives you a warmer, steadier light for longer.
That is what we mean by a high-value candle. Not expensive. Worth it.
Where your money goes
When you buy a Beeswax Works candle, the money does not stop with us.
It travels back along a short Canadian chain. To the beekeepers in Alberta and British Columbia who kept their hives through a long winter and collected the cappings wax during extraction. To Poelman Apiaries in Fort Macleod, Alberta — family owned and operated, more than thirty years in the business, filtering and refining their wax with no additives, preservatives or chemicals — who have supplied us for ten years and backed this business the whole way. To Wicks & Wax, who supply our cotton braided wick, tabbed wicks and tea light cups, and to Atkins & Pearce, who make the wick behind them — which means our wick has a named source two suppliers deep. To Farm Food Drink, the Canadian agency behind how this brand looks and reads. To Allcard Packaging, the Canadian printer producing our new bilingual, barcoded boxes. To the independent shops across the country that stock us. And to a small candle room in Revelstoke, British Columbia.
That is a lot of hands for a candle this simple. Every one of them is doing the work properly, and every order keeps that chain intact.
We publish these names because a product this simple should have nothing to hide.
Three ways to find us
Beeswax Works works three ways, and we are glad of all of them.
Direct to your door. Buy from us here, one taper pair or a full trio set, shipped from Revelstoke.
In bulk, for the occasion. Weddings, anniversaries, celebrations of life, corporate gifting, retreats and long tables. If you need candles in quantity for one occasion rather than for resale, talk to us rather than adding forty items to a cart. This is new ground for us and we are building it around what people actually ask for, so tell us what you need and we will work it out with you.
On the shelf. We supply independent shops, studios and markets right across Canada through our wholesale storefront. Our stockists are how a small mountain-town maker reaches a country this size. If you run a shop and you would like to carry our candles, we would genuinely like to hear from you.
Visit Beeswax Works Wholesale →
A small business, plainly
We are a small Canadian business in a stretch that has not been easy for small Canadian businesses. Costs have moved. Shipping across the border has become more complicated and more expensive than it used to be.
We are not going to make that your problem, and we are not going to dress it up either. What it has done is sharpen where we put our effort: closer to home, with Canadian customers and Canadian shops, growing at a pace we can actually hold. We would rather do a smaller number of things properly and stand behind every one of them.
Still here, still making candles by hand, and planning on it for a long while yet.
Everyday light, not occasional light
We do not think candles are for special occasions. That is how you end up with a nice candle you never burn.
Ours are for the supper table on an ordinary Tuesday. For the long dark middle of a Canadian winter. For a room that wants to feel finished. For a gift that gets used instead of kept. For a gathering where nobody looks at their phone. And for the night the power goes out and you are quietly pleased with yourself for keeping a drawer full of them.
Same candle. Every reason.
Pure ~ Simple ~ Light
One vision, three owners, since 1994. Made by hand, from Canadian wax, by people you can name.
Slow, steady and still going is what we sell. It is also how we intend to run the place.
Thank you for being part of this stretch of it.
Ron Glave
Beekeeper, candlemaker, and third owner of Beeswax Works