By Esther Mwoloi
Every household requires a source of light. If your home is situated in areas that are not yet connected to the grid, you most likely incur high costs of paraffin to light lamps in the evening. Have you ever thought of saving costs by using candles that you make at home?
Julius Mutuku is a beekeeper from Mutituni Village, Nduu Sub Location, Machakos County who has been keeping bees since the year 2017. Although Julius started bee keeping business with little knowledge about it, he has been able to get lots of profit from its products such as honey, candles and propolis. He is also a carpenter by profession hence he can make his own beehives. He sells one hive at Ksh5,000 and already colonized hives at Ksh15,000. He explains the procedure he follows in making candles out of bee wax.
Once honey is harvested, a farmer is left with honey combs which are useful in making candle wax.
Candle making procedure
- Ingredients
- A sizable amount of honey comb depending on the size and the number of candles you require
- A sufuria
- Water
- Source of heat
- A clean basin or a jar
- Procedure
- Light up your source of heat and place the sufuria.
- Place your honey combs into the sufuria
- Add some water to the honey combs
- Let them boil for about ten minutes
- The wax which will be yellow in color will settle at the top
- Some amount of water will settle at the centre
- A black component known as the propolis will settle right at the bottom
- Pour the top component which is the melted wax into a clean jar.
- Before the wax cools off and hardens pour it in the containers that have your desired shape.
- If you are interested in making straight candles a pipe will be suitable for that.
- Remember to place a cotton wick into the container that you are using before pouring in the wax.
- Leave the cotton wick hanging outside to avoid it being immersed into the wax.
- Leave the wax to dry off.
- You can now remove the candle from your container and light it up.
The color of the candle is determined by the consumer preference. In order to get varying colors add your preferable food color to the wax and mix. For people who like pleasant smells adding scented liquid oil into the melted wax is recommended. This will make the candle to produce a sweet pleasant smell when it burns up. Julius says that this is one of the simplest and cost-effective ways of making candles.
esthermwoloi@gmail.com