BEESWAX WONDER CREAM- A Story

By Eleanor Orr

Once upon a time, there was an enthusiastic beekeeper. He loved his honey bees, extracting and packaging honey and creating candles with his beeswax. He made dinosaur, angel, beehive and bee candles. He made tapered and fat pillar candles. What more could he do with his beeswax?

One day he came across a recipe for beeswax hand cream. Maybe this would be something he could do. He consulted his good wife. She studied the recipe and agreed to assist him in this endeavour. After all, there were only four ingredients and nothing complicated in the procedure. They would need jars though. She had an idea.

She called several mothers with infants and asked them to save their baby food jars. And that is how Orr Beeswax Hand Cream came into being. The hand cream in baby food jars were given out to family and friends. Compliments were abundant. The hand cream seemed to have miraculous healing powers. The beekeeper and his wife decided to help other people and produce the hand cream for sale. They found a company that sold proper jars and a Farm Co-op that sold mineral oil in gallon jugs. Pouring the cream into the jars had proven difficult and messy but they did away with that problem by buying a cake- icing bag. A printer produced attractive and dignified labels for the jars.

Soon they had customers coming to the door over and over for the healing, soothing cream. Stories abounded about the success of beeswax hand cream. In fact it soon became evident it was not just a hand cream. It was being used for cracks on feet, psoriasis, rashes, sunburn, splits in the skin at the end of fingers and thumbs, chapped lips, cuts and abrasions. One lady recommended it to friends as a means of keeping black flies from biting. She put it on her grandchildren and swore that it worked. She told others, who then came to the house asking for the cream that prevented black flies from biting. At a farm fair a lady sampled the cream and returned later to announce excitedly that she had a wart on her hand for some time and the cream had caused the wart to vanish. Another customer bought a jar and returned for another jar when the cream healed the rough skin under her nose caused by “allergy nose”when a prescription from a dermatologist did not help at all. Grandparents bought several jars to send to their grandson with severe excema and returned for more when the parents reported the cream miraculously helped.

Eventually the beekeeper became enchanted with producing queen bees and lost interest in his beeswax products. But the cream was still in demand. What to do? Fortunately a beautiful, talented daughter took over making the cream using the beekeeper’s beeswax and equipment. When her husband was posted overseas, a younger sister became entranced with producing beeswax products. She was very creative and thought of ways to make the cream attractive as gift items, and her candles were presented in unique ways.

But why was the beeswax cream so magical? Propolis! The honeybees produce propolis to fill in spaces in the hive and stick things together. The beekeeper would scrape this substance off with his hive tool and save it. When he had a sufficient quantity he would mail it to a pharmacutical company where it was used for manufacturing healing products. Of course, there must be traces of propolis in the beeswax! But I like to think it is magic. Try some and see for yourself!