Introducing Beeswax Modeling

Here is a story I created for Toucie when we were ready to begin beeswax modeling this spring.

We spread a blanket under the lilacs where the bees were working, had a pretty tray of apple slices and crackers and a tiny bowl of fragrant honey to dip them in, and a brand new package of golden Stockmar beeswax at hand. Toucie began dipping into the honey and apples as I began the story.




Nestled deep in the woods there is a tiny city. The folks that live there love their city very much (after all they built it their very own selves!) and take very good care of each other there. There is always plenty of delicious food, the babies there are always well cared for, and the rooms (each one exactly like the other) are all snug and well crafted. It is a very busy place as each one has special work to do and does it cheerfully and well. Even the Queen, in her royal chambers at the center of the city, stays busy with her special work of tucking new eggs each into their own cozy cradle. 

This tiny city is a beehive and the folk that live and work there are, of course, the bees!

In the Spring and Summer and Autumn, when flowers are blooming, I’m sure that you’ve seen the bee-folk humming merrily as they move all about over the land visiting blossoms. Look, here is one now…watch her as she forages, sipping a little nectar here and a little nectar there. Sometimes as she flies she gathers yellow flower dust into her little leg-baskets as she goes. But today she is gathering nectar. She visits hundreds of flowers! She is collecting nectar to bring home to the hive-city, sometimes sipping a little for herself. Now both her tummy and her nectar bag are quite full of nectar and she is flying home with her heavy load. 

In the city, there are many sisters waiting to help her. She gives them the nectar from her bag and they take it away to make it into golden honey. (This will be the food that all the bee folk will need in the cold months when there are no flowers blooming on the land.) Sometimes our little bee brings her nectar to her sisters and then flies right off again to collect more, but today her tummy is so full that she must rest. She climbs to the ceiling of the hive where some of the other full bee-folk are already gathered. She tucks up her wings and smooths her pretty yellow-and-brown jacket and takes a nice, long nap. 

While she is resting something wonderful happens….for when she wakes up and stretches and straightens her little jacket, she finds that all eight of her jacket pockets are full of wax! She takes it out of her pockets and presses it, and pulls it, and pushes it, and kneads it until it is smooth and soft, fragrant and golden. This beeswax is precious and important…it is what the bee-folk use to build their entire city! Beeswax forms the perfect walls of all the snug little houses, all the little honey pots and their lids, all the little cradles for the growing baby bee-folk…what a wonderful thing our bee has done! She takes her bit of beeswax and puts it together with the wax that her sisters have made, then off into the blue sky she buzzes, in search of more blossoms.

The bee-folk work so very hard that they often make more honey and more beeswax than they need for their city. Sometimes there is a gentle and careful person, a “beekeeper” who cares for and protects bees in their hive-city and is able to share in their honey and beeswax. So, somewhere there is a city of beefolk and a careful beekeeper who together made it so that we could have this treasure.

I split the Stockmar bar in two and gave Toucie her piece of wax during the part of the story where the bee "kneads it until it is smooth and soft, fragrant and golden" and we warmed it in our hands for the rest of the story. 

It was wonderful to watch her as she held the beeswax knowing how much work had gone into making it and what a treasure it was! She worked for a long time to draw a form out of her lump of beeswax...when she was done she showed me- it was a honeybee!

Here is the verse we say when we begin work with beeswax...I borrowed bits and pieces of other rhymes to formulate this one:

From the bees, this gift of gold
Is here for us to warm and hold.
Fragrant beeswax in our hand
Is full of goodness from the land.