Honey & Beeswax Bar
Beeswax for a dense, long-lasting bar plus a touch of honey for humectancy. Gentle warm-amber scent without fragrance oil.
Beeswax pulls double duty: it hardens the bar significantly (3% is enough — go higher and the lather suffers) and brings a faint honey-amber aroma you don't get from any other ingredient. Pairing it with 1% honey amplifies the warmth and adds humectancy. The trade-off is heat: both honey and the higher pour temperature needed for beeswax will accelerate trace and can overheat the loaf. Soap a touch warmer than usual, then don't insulate.
Ingredients (1 kg batch)
| Ingredient | Amount |
|---|---|
Olive oil Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil | 450.0 g (45%) |
Coconut oil 76° Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil | 250.0 g (25%) |
Shea butter Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter | 150.0 g (15%) |
Sweet almond oil Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil | 70.0 g (7%) |
Castor oil Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil | 50.0 g (5%) |
Beeswax Cera Alba (Beeswax) | 30.0 g (3%) |
NaOH (lye) | 139.1 g (99% purity) |
Distilled water | 330.0 g |
Honey | 10.0 g (1% of oils) |
Open the recipe in the calculator to scale up or down by gram, ounce, kg, or pound.
Expected qualities
Step-by-step
- Standard CP setup with full PPE.
- Weigh oils into the soaping pot. Beeswax melts around 62°C (145°F) — higher than most soap oils — so heat the pot until everything is fully liquid.
- Cool the oils to 49–54°C (120–130°F). Beeswax solidifies fast below that and you'll get tiny wax flecks in the bar.
- Mix lye-water and bring it to roughly the same temperature as the oils — within 5°C is fine.
- Dissolve the honey in 1 tablespoon of warm distilled water. Set aside; you'll add it at trace.
- Combine lye-water and oils. Stick-blend in short pulses — beeswax+honey accelerates trace, you'll get there fast.
- At light trace, stir in the dissolved honey. Don't over-blend.
- Pour into a lined loaf mould. Do NOT insulate — honey will cause the loaf to overheat and crack.
- Unmould after 24–48 hours. Cure 6 weeks; beeswax bars need extra time to fully harden.
Notes & troubleshooting
- Not vegan — beeswax and honey are both animal products. Mark labels accordingly.
- Stay at or below 3% beeswax. Higher percentages dampen lather noticeably.
- Local raw honey gives the warmest scent but darkens the bar to tan. Light pasteurised honey keeps the colour paler.
- If you live somewhere humid, beeswax bars sweat — wrap or shrink-film for storage and shipping.
Regulatory disclaimer
FormulaNorth helps organize cosmetic formulation, label, costing, and CNF preparation information. It is not legal or regulatory advice and does not replace Health Canada guidance, professional regulatory review, or the maker's responsibility to verify product compliance before sale.
Selling in Canada?
Soap sold to the public in Canada is generally regulated as a cosmetic. Save this recipe to a free FormulaNorth account, then use the bilingual label drafter and CNF preparation tools to get ready for sale.
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