People sometimes ask why we don’t sell beeswax wrap, as it’s the type of product our type of shop sells. The fact of the matter is, I’ve looked for suppliers of beeswax wrap but never been happy about where the supply of the wax comes from. I mean, it might be OK mass-produced in China, but there’s no way of knowing, and honey + beeswax production can be not very nice for the bees & that’s where a lot of the wax comes from for most wax wraps.
Finally, I’ve found a social enterprise (thanks to Martin Kunz again) that makes wax wraps in a sustainable way that means I don’t need to worry about the bees. But let’s rewind a bit – what’s a wax wrap, what’s it used for, and what are the benefits?
Before plastic, there was oil — and before that, wax
Long before "oilcloth" meant the plastic-coated fabric you'll find on a kitchen table today, it meant exactly what it said: fabric impregnated with oil. The oil in question was almost always linseed, pressed from flax. Linseed is a "drying oil" — it doesn't evaporate, it slowly cures in the air into a tough, flexible, water-resistant skin. It's the same chemistry that gives us oil paint and linoleum (whose name comes straight from linum, the Latin for flax). Generations of sailors relied on linseed-treated canvas for their "oilskins," and wagon covers and floor cloths were made the same way. The plastic tablecloth kept the old name but quietly dropped the oil sometime in the last century.
Wax goes back even further. The ancient Egyptians impregnated linen with beeswax, the Romans waxed their ships and sealed their food stores with it. Medieval households used waxed "cerecloth" — from cera, wax — to wrap and protect anything precious or perishable, precisely because it kept out air and moisture. When cheap paraffin arrived with the petroleum age, it largely replaced beeswax for waterproofing (think of a waxed Barbour jacket), but the principle was thousands of years old by then. Coating cloth in wax to keep water out and freshness in is one of the oldest preserving tricks we have.
An 8,000-year-old habit
Our love of honey — and the wax that comes with it — is older than farming itself. On the wall of a cave near Bicorp in Valencia, Spain, there's a painting of a person climbing to reach a wild bees' nest, one hand in the comb while the bees swirl around them. It's thought to be around 8,000 years old, and it's the oldest known picture of humans gathering honey anywhere in the world. Similar scenes have been found across three continents, India among them. People have been risking their necks for honeycomb, and the beeswax that comes with it, for a very long time.
Why we chose these wraps: Under The Mango Tree
We’re getting our beeswax wraps made by Under The Mango Tree, a social enterprise in India that creates employment opportunities for women.
The honeycomb is harvested from wild Apis dorsata, the ‘rock bee’. According to Kipling the most dangerous animal in the jungle! Under the Mango Tree ensure bee harvesters to just take a corner of the comb, so there is enough left for the bees. These are different from European honey bees. Instead of making the comb inside a structure, such as a hollow tree, wall cavity or hive, they make free hanging combs. In order for the combs to retain their structural integrity, they actually produce a stronger and more flexible wax. This means the wax in our wax wraps performs more efficiently: it is highly flexible and remains impregnated in the fabric better.
Under the Mango Tree also trains marginal farmers to keep native Indian bees, turning what was once risky wild honey-hunting into a less risky, sustainable source of income — and better pollination and bigger harvests for the farmers' own crops. The honey and beeswax are bought back from the growers at premium, fair-trade prices, and the wraps themselves are made by women's groups earning a proper wage.
Using beeswax wraps to store bread
I particularly wanted to get a large wax wrap for storing bread. If you seal it in plastic you trap moisture, so the crust goes soft and rubbery and mould sets in early. If you leave it in paper it breathes, but it dries out within a day. A beeswax wrap is the solution! The waxed cotton is water-resistant but still breathable — a bit like a rind or a skin — so it slows moisture loss without letting the loaf sweat. The crumb stays soft, the crust stays crisp, and the bread keeps its life a day or two longer.
There's another bonus, too. Beeswax has natural antibacterial and antifungal qualities, and studies of beeswax wraps have found they suppress common spoilage microbes — helpful for keeping the mould off. Fold the wrap snugly around your loaf, and you've a reusable, compostable, plastic-free bread keeper that would have made perfect sense to a Roman baker.
The old way, made new
Waxed cloth kept food safe for our ancestors long before the fridge, let alone the plastic drawer of cling film. All we've done is find a version made kindly — fair wages, well-kept bees, natural fibres — and bring it to your kitchen. Wrap your bread, pack your sandwiches, wrap your cheese, cover a bowl, and when it's finally done its years of service, let it return to the earth. That's our kind of full circle.
