People always comment about the UK being so lovely and green in the summer, but if you look closer, it is really green and yellow.

If you drive, cycle or travel by train or bus you will see that field upon field up all over the country is filled with bright yellow flowers, this is rapeseed from which we get many lovely by products, especially lovely rapeseed oil, a great oil to cook with and to dress a salad.

We also get rapeseed wax, which at Hopping Hare Candles, we use as our wax of choice for the majority of our candles.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get asked is why do we use rapeseed wax instead of soy, paraffin or other waxes. There’s a few really good reasons which we’ve outline below but it is simply that we love working with rapeseed wax as it gives us the results we want for our fragrance range and gives a good clean smoke and soot free burn which leaves little waste, which gives our customers great value and the added bonus of not having black soot marks up their walls. Most people don’t even know that you can make candles from rapeseed  wax, and assume all natural waxes are soy, and to be fair, most are soy so it is what people expect.

Here are some other reasons why rapeseed wax is a great choice for candles:

• Low carbon footprint  – rapeseed is grown in UK & Europe (extensively where we are based in Northamptonshire)  so it is not travelling over oceans to get here like Soy, sometimes it is very local
• It does not create harmful toxins like paraffin
• It is non-hazardous for us, our pets or wildlife
• It helps our bees, (and we all love bees), they love the nectar that rapeseed flowers product
• It feeds our animals
• In the form of bio-fuel, it powers our vehicles
• It is sustainable
• It protects our soil
• It is not genetically modified

As well as its obviously fabulous eco and green credentials, we love the fact it has exceptional hot and cold throw properties (and if you are not familiar with this candle making terminology, it simply means they smell great when lit and when not lit).

Rapeseed wax burns at a low temperature so the fragrance evaporates gently from the wax pool rather than being burnt off at a high temperature, which also makes the aroma linger for longer.

It does burn really well too, the low temperature giving an extended burn time over other natural and mineral based waxes but a lot of that is down to using the correct wick, pouring wax at the right temperature into a correctly heated container and waiting til the wax pool hits the sides of the container before you extinguish the flame. We candle makers, spend hours finessing these fine details so that you get a beautiful smelling product that you love and want to buy again.

So if you care about what you burn in your home, give rapeseed wax a try.

After all, if rapeseed makes bees happy, it can put a smile on our faces too.