Frequently asked questions
Do you offer international delivery?
Yes, and tracked shipping is available internationally.​ Due to living in often remote spots please allow me two days before posting. A tracking number will always be used. I cannot guarantee that the products will arrive without breakage or loss.
Do you create personalized gift boxes?
Absolutely, let me know what you would like to include.
Candles make great gifts!
What is your return policy?
Once purchased, in person or online, returns cannot be accepted. This is a small, one-person business, without the resources to process or manage returns. Additionally, the nature of being mobile on a boat means that returning to a fixed address would not be possible. I do my best to ensure that each product is made with love and care, and packaged diligently. Tracking numbers are also used.
What are sustainable and healthy beehives?
There are many factors to consider. Having a low yearly death rate of bees is one (often commercial death rates are very high); this includes health and avoiding preventable illnesses. Excess bees in a hive should be made available to beekeepers in the local community. Some bad practices involve dumping hives and letting them die each year, simply purchasing replacements the following year. Sustainable hives should be kept alive year after happy year.
Returns and failures
I try my best to make all candles to the highest quality and inspect each one carefully before sending. However, with it being a pure natural product combined with the handmade process please allow for the occassional imperfection.
I am a very small enterprise and therefore I do not accept physical returns and replacements, primarily due to the high costs of postage, and will not accept liability for damage done by the courier once posted. Yet if there is a major failure of the candle, such as the wick collapsing and dousing the flame after a few minutes of being lit etc. then please take a photo and email me. I will send an appropriate refund to you, using whatever method of payment you initially chose. Such failures are thankfully very rare but can occur on new lines of candles. I spend a lot of time testing ideal wick thickness and wax stability before releasing a new candle variety, but sometimes a bad one can get through. I really do want you to be pleased and happy with the results!
Colour variations
The yellow colour of natural beeswax will vary slightly with each hive and also change through the season, so the shade of yellow in the finished candle will naturally vary. Fresh beeswax, immediately after being secreted from the bee is white and it becomes increasingly yellow as pollen, silk, and larval debris are inadvertently incorporated. Pure beeswax will also fade to white in sunlight.
Whitening with age
Even when kept out of sunlight a thin crystalline white coating will often develop over time, and this can be wiped off if undesired. This whitening is called 'wax bloom' and is normal for natural beeswax. It happens by secondary crystallization of unsaturated hydrocarbons in the beeswax (not by oxidation as commonly stated by candlemakers). These hydrocarbons remain surprisingly mobile in the wax for months before eventually crystallising out on the surface.
See the paper by Bartl et al. 2015 if you are interested in this topic, or email me for links. Some people like it and some people don't. Personally, I like it.
