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| The Opera Australia Chorus light the stunning pillar candles made by Queen B in the first Act of Tosca. |
A GUEST POST BY CATE BURTON - Queen Bee of the Queen B Hive
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| When a bee flew into the studio, the Queen B team wasted no time fetching the camera to capture the "Bee's seal of approval" |
We like to think that there’s not much about beeswax candle-making that we don’t know about at Queen B. With over a decade of experience, and having approached beeswax candle-making from a scientific perspective (rather than as a craft), there’s a lot that we know. We have a comprehensive understanding of beeswax (and that beeswax from different honey flows burns differently). We have filmed, photographed and analysed the over 500 different pure cotton wicks we have available. We’ve even documented the different results we get depending on the temperature of the day we’re pouring! But even then, the candles for Tosca were a challenge.
First, a little history…
Beeswax candle-making has been around in one form or another for centuries, traced as far back as the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD). From Roman times until the 18thcentury candles were made from either beeswax (for royalty) or tallow/animal fat (for everyone else). In the mid 18thCentury, the whaling industry started to provide ‘spermaceti’ (a semi liquid fat from the head cavity) which became the primary wax for candles until the early 19th Century when stearin (another pure fat) was discovered. But it was the discovery of petroleum in Burma in the mid 1850’s that transformed candle-making. Today, it is estimated that over 90% of candles are made from paraffin, a by-product of petroleum refining.
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| Blocks of beeswax, pre candle-making |
Throughout that time, however, beeswax candles have remained the candle of choice for royalty and for churches, many monasteries keeping their own bees and making their own candles to use and sell. Whilst we hold no monastic tendencies at Queen B, our desire has always been to make candles that are non-toxic to burn a fit for royalty, but affordable to the masses. Being passionate about Australian manufacturing, we hand-make every candle on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
And now for the challenge!
Who would have thought that hand-pouring a 50cm candle that we already do a 35cm version of would involve rearranging our entire building! Hand making beeswax candles if you’re a perfectionist is not for the faint hearted.
For the Tosca order we sourced over 300kg’s of beeswax from an ironbark honey flow in Southern NSW, built special jigs to handle the height and weight of these candles and moved everything in our building to create a new production space (to ensure the pouring wasn’t open to the elements and the candles cooled evenly).
Yet still we had problems.
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| Using heat lamps to keep the beeswax warm. |
There is something quite extraordinary about nature and just how right she gets things. For example, a female worker bee makes around 1/8th of a pinkie nail of beeswax in her lifetime. If you clean that wax properly, and wick test thoroughly to find the ‘perfect’ wick, the result is sublime. Each candle with a large flame (due to the high melting point of the wax), surrounded by a golden halo (unique to pure beeswax candles) and incredible, long burn times.
Each Tosca pillar burns for over 100 hours and contains the life’s work of around 10,000 female worker bees (and several grey hairs on the heads of the Queen B team)! Perhaps best of all, being beeswax they are non-toxic to burn which ensures that the opera singers (and audience) can enjoy the candle-light without the fumes.
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| Candlemaker Tilly at work in the Queen B studio |
Whilst we’ve worked with many global luxury brands (including Dom Perignon, Cartier, Dior, Riedel, Penfolds and Bollinger) as a business passionate about the arts, and about Australian made, it was a special privilege to work with Opera Australia. Each Tosca pillar candle was individually hand-poured at Queen B’s hive on Sydney’s northern beaches using 100% pure Australian beeswax and a pure cotton wick.
The thing we love the most is being part of the team working behind the scenes to make an Opera Australia production memorable.
It wasn’t until we got started that we realised the sheer number of people involved – from the carpenters, to the metal workers, the costume makers, the fibre glass workers, the painters, the decorators… and yes, the beeswax candle makers! Every craft an essential part of putting on an unforgettable performance. Every skill employed right here, in Australia.
In this day and age of budget cutting and cheap imports, it is incredibly gratifying that this still exists.