Candle-Makers Scurry, as Busy as Bees, to Keep Up With Christmastime

December is the busiest time of the year at Knorr Beeswax Products, a family-owned candle factory nestled in a leafy clearing off Via de la Valle in rural Del Mar.

Above the entrance, a painted beehive and trailing flowers meander across the building’s stucco walls. Inside the gift shop, the sweet fragrance of beeswax perfumes the air and candles flicker. In the factory beyond, 30 employees process Knorr’s distinctive beeswax candles, working methodically to melt wax into colorful cylinders that are cut, tapered, wicked, polished, wrapped and packaged for shipping nationwide.

What’s the best part of the chandlery business?

“Christmas,” said Steve Knorr, grandson of founder Ferdinand Knorr. “People really like our product, and there’s so much entertaining between Christmas and New Year’s. Then in January, beekeeping starts.”

Outside the candle factory, a great Torrey pine dwarfs the buildings below, its branches sheltering the house, shop and outbuildings. The tree, well over half a century old, is a measure of time, marking three generations of candle-makers--Ferdinand, Henry and Steve, the current owner.

A yellowed photo shows Ferdinand (Fred) Knorr, a tool and die maker, beside the then-gangly four-foot sapling he planted when he bought the Del Mar land and took up beekeeping as a hobby in the ‘20s.

“My grandfather came to this country from Poland in 1904, escaping from czarist Russia,” said Steve. “He kept 500 hives, which, for those times, was a lot.”

“Pretty soon, Dad was getting too much wax,” added Henry, who bought the business in 1956 from his father and operated it until Steve took over two years ago.

To deal with his oversupply of wax, Fred put his knack for working with machinery to practical use. The result was a processed version of the bees’ natural honeycomb, and his first beeswax candles in 1928. A friend who owned the Rancho Santa Fe Inn began ordering a steady supply of candles. Orders from gift shops and beekeepers followed, and a business was born.

Today, Knorr Beeswax Products is well-known not only for its beekeeping supplies, but also for its 100% beeswax candles in 31 vibrant colors.

While Steve thrives on the business aspects of candle making, Henry is happiest working with the machines, most of which he or his father built.

“To make something and see it work . . . I get a lot of satisfaction from that,” Henry said. The factory’s machine shop overflows with sturdy vintage machines--milling machines, surface grinders, drill presses, band saws, hacksaws and lathes. In this workshop, tools, work benches, spare parts, piles of metal shavings and more sprawl in ordered disarray.

“I don’t really have to send out to have anyone do anything for me,” said Henry, who handles repairs himself.

“Being from the old country, my father hated to part with a nickel. He’d rather make something than buy it. . . . When I bought the business from him in 1956, nothing was standard. I couldn’t go down and buy a replacement bearing because he’d gotten them in odd sizes at scrap yards or second-hand stores.”

Henry opted for standardizing the machinery, but still painstakingly constructed the machines himself, combining an eclectic assortment of gears, pipes, dies and tanks to produce more candles more efficiently for an increasing market.

“There isn’t any part (of the business) that I mind doing, from the dirtiest part, the filtering, to running the foundation (for the beekeepers) or packing the stuff to ship it out,” said Henry, comfortable in his work clothes and cap. “I want to keep things moving.”

“My dad feels as though he’s retired now--he’s only working 40 hours a week,” Steve quipped.

Free self-guided factory tours draw visitors (as many as 100 a day) to Knorr’s as much as the spacious gift shop. On this day, in the candle-making room, a gaggle of young Brownies watched melted wax push slowly through fluted dies like giant soft red licorice whips. These extruded candles’ cross-sections are shaped like wagon wheels. In a corner of the room, a beekeeper mannequin watches over a small glass-sealed beehive where live bees instinctively build the hexagonal wax cells for honey or larvae.

Showing the Brownie troop a honeycombed wax sheet, longtime employee Vic DuShaune explained that this beeswax foundation “gets things going quicker for the bees.”

The candle-making process actually begins out of view of the public in a labyrinth of old buildings. In an open back lot, raw beeswax stacked on pallets resembles huge chunks of cheese. The range of natural colors, from toffee to deep caramel, is dictated by the plants frequented by the bees--sage, alfalfa, buckwheat, clover, almond.

“An almond grower may call in a beekeeper to pollinate his crop,” Steve said. “Beekeepers aren’t in the wax business, but for every 60 pounds of honey, you get one pound of beeswax, the byproduct of making honey. For every 10,000 pounds of beeswax we buy, we sell back 5,000 pounds to beekeepers as foundation frames for their hives.”

“These bees are robbing honey,” Steve said of the bees hovering around the dirt-covered beeswax cakes. “We use more beeswax than is produced in California.” The factory has run through as much as 330,000 pounds of beeswax per year, averaging 200,000 pounds. In 1985, the factory used 171,000 pounds.

The smell of melted wax permeates the warmth of the filter room, where raw beeswax is melted down in deep rectangular vats, carefully monitored to stay at the 145-degree melting point.

“There are six inches of water at the bottom of each tank,” said Steve. “As the wax melts, the dirt settles out, and the wax floats to the top.” Semi-clean, the wax then flows through pipes to the tall vat of a second filtering machine containing charcoal and diatomaceous earth.

“That’s actually an old wine filter, the same one used by my grandfather,” Steve said.

A rumbling pump forces the amber-colored wax through a series of filters and out through spigots. Where wine once flowed, clean hot wax now circulates, virtually pure and ready for processing after just 20 minutes.

“We melt down 2,000 pounds of wax twice a day,” he added. “The great thing is that we can reuse the wax. We use odd lengths, reprocess scraps, and even get the dye out. There’s little waste.”

In January, after the holiday rush, candle production yields to production of beeswax foundations for beekeepers and other beeswax products--wax for dentists (for wax impressions), carpenters and jobbers.

“The beekeeping is actually bigger than the candle business,” Steve said.

To produce the honeycomb sheets so important for beekeeping, rectangular sheets of wax are pressed with a hexagonal pattern that duplicates the bee’s artistry.

Early on, when Fred Knorr first came up with the concept, he created rollers of 3,600 tiny pegs with hexagonally shaped heads. Henry could still shape these pegs today.

“But I found a place in L.A. that makes them a lot less expensively. They’re not as accurate as mine, though,” he added.

Next, row by row, Henry Knorr drills the 3,600 individual holes on a metal cylinder, inserting each peg by hand to form the hexagonal mosaic that makes the impression in the beeswax foundation.

“I can make one in eight hours,” said Henry. “Less if I don’t have any interruptions.”

Beekeepers slide the wood-framed honeycomb sheets into the box-shaped hives. With this wax foundation as a base, the bees “pull out” each thin-walled cell, extending and deepening it for larva or honey. Later, after honey production, each frame is “capped.”

A hot knife removes the cap of wax sealing the individual cells and the whole sheet, frame and all, is whirled in a large metal barrel (like a centrifuge) to pull out the liquid.

“It’s like Roundup at the fair--the honey flies out,” Steve Knorr said.

To produce the honeycomb sheets, Henry runs the heavy wax rolls through what his wife, Judy, calls “the most interesting machine in the place--it’s a production line in itself.”

Designed by Fred, updated by Henry, this Rube Goldberg-like combination of metal drums, a wire cage, spools, gears, bins and old wringer washer rollers now covered with a floral print has hummed along faithfully for years.

“It needs new bearings, but I can’t change them this close to Christmas,” said Henry, whose engineering wizardry keeps this incongruous invention rolling.

The first stage compresses the wax, using soapy water so the layers won’t stick. Henry chips block ice (to cool the wax) with an ice pick for the second stage.

“Wax tends to stretch out if it’s too warm,” said Henry, threading the wax through a series of old rollers like a giant sewing machine. The roll undulates over and under, runs through the hexagonal die, and is sliced into rectangular sheets by a wicked-looking blade (encased in a safety cage) that flips them one by one into a growing stack.

“I haven’t gotten my fingers caught in there yet,” Henry said of the rollers. “I’ve come close to getting hurt, but haven’t--just a few scratches.”

Thanks to Henry’s mechanical expertise, the whole process has been streamlined. Where it once took Fred a full day to produce 20 pounds of honeycomb sheets, dipping them by hand, Henry can put out 20 pounds in five minutes. Henry’s penciled calendar records show production running in the neighborhood of 1,600-2,100 pounds of honeycomb per week.

Later, Henry dug into a file cabinet in the middle of his workshop and produced a ruled cardboard sheet with meticulous penciled figures.

“I figure we (Henry and his wife) went through 8 million pounds of beeswax in the 29 years we owned the business,” he said.

While beekeepers buy the natural colored beeswax foundation, Knorr customers can roll their own candles from colored honeycomb sheets, choosing from 31 colors in both tapers and beeswax sheets, ranging from white (“always the most popular”) to six shades of green, seven reds and four golds, plus colors like electric blue, saffron and cerise.

“We sell a lot of hot pink and purple, too,” Steve said.

All of Knorr’s candles are made from 100% beeswax (it is one of very few beeswax candle factories in the country), which makes them dripless and smokeless. The candles are wilt-resistant (holding their shape even in desert heat), tough and fragrant.

In the room where the candles are made, a huge round vat holds exactly 300 pounds of wax. Wax seeps from the tank, congealing in a thin, smooth layer around a cooled metal drum that rolls like a thick ribbon onto a bobbin-like huge spool.

Across the room, another machine forces the dyed wax through molds of varying diameters to create the long candle strands.

“Those are the same dies my granddad used,” Steve said.

Rounded tracks cradle these newly extruded candles, and the six-foot lengths are transferred onto a long wooden cart to cool.

Beneath both machines in the candle-making room burns an open flame. As with any flammable substance, constant surveillance is necessary. A 1983 fire destroyed the original refining and candle-making areas of the factory, putting local beekeepers out of business during the Knorrs’ 30-day rebuilding blitz. The filter room where the fire started is now housed at a distance from the main factory.

“You can’t worry about fire, though,” Steve said, “or you wouldn’t get any sleep at night.”

In the next room, long shelves store the uncut lengths. “Beeswax is like an apple,” he said. “It develops a bloom or haze which can then be polished. While we could cut and trim the lengths right away, we like to let them harden a week or so.” Then a machine “like a hot skill saw” cuts the long tubes into standard candle lengths--6, 10, 12 and 15 inches. A machine “like a hot pencil sharpener” shapes the tips.

Wicking is the only step of the process not done on the premises. Each wick is inserted by hand in neighboring homes. Steve demonstrates the simple wicking device--a long thin wire which secures the wick while the candle is drawn over it. The wick is snipped and firmly anchored in place.

“The wick is the most important part of the candle,” said Steve, explaining that it can’t be put in too tightly or too loosely.

In the polishing room, workers run the finished candles through machines with whirling brushes which raise a soft burnished surface and brush away minor imperfections.

The finished candles are wrapped in pairs, boxed and stored at room temperature for shipping.

“We protect the candles from the cold with special packing,” said Steve. “If the candles get too cold, they turn snow white and can shatter. Our candles take heat better than cold. One of our hollow candles will stand straight up in 120-degree heat.”

Now at the peak of its candle-making cycle, the factory has been stockpiling inventory for the Christmas rush, producing 2,000 candles for every 200 pounds of beeswax.

“We try to have at least 100 boxes of red and white candles ready for Christmas,” said Knorr. “Business doesn’t slow down until after the holidays.”

Besides its own beeswax candles, the Knorr gift shop carries a broad range of candles made from tallow, stearine (a fatty acid), paraffin and other materials. More elaborate candles are sculpted into animals, cast in sand, or designed in intricate “cut and curl” styles. The shop features glass and china candle holders, glass chimneys, wreaths, scents and drip shields.

Matching the measured pace of the rural setting, Knorr’s congenial shopkeepers take time with each customer--explaining candle-making to the novice, or greeting old friends. The Knorr brochure gives directions for amateurs who want to sculpt candles from the brightly colored honeycomb sheets.

Knorr Candle Factory has been passed from father to son to grandson.

“My dad would have been 100 this year--he lived to be 96,” Henry said. “I grew up in the business. I had it on my own for 29 years . . . Steve makes the decisions now.”

Today, Steve hustles about the factory, the smooth businessman, a beeper hooked to his belt.

“With my beeper, they can find me anywhere,” he said laughing. His sales background has served him well in planning, organizing and production.

“We’re trying to retire,” said his mother, Judy, who still works one day a week in the office. “But it’s hard to quit.”

Her husband, Henry, can’t turn off the flow of ideas that has kept the family factory running.

“I have to be doing something all the time. . . . There are so many things that could be made,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to make a candle with the wick (already) in it.”