Making A Mosquito Repellent Candle: The Easy Way

If mosquito bites are ruining your evenings, you may be looking for different natural methods to repel these unwanted guests from your home or garden. We suggest you discover how to make a 100% natural mosquito repellent candle, based on beeswax and essential oils.

What equipment do you need?

To make a homemade mosquito repellent candle from 100% natural ingredients, you need:

50 g of beeswax
10 ml of vegetable oil (sunflower or olive oil for example)
a glass jar of about 5 cm in diameter
a cotton wick
a wooden chopstick (Asian chopstick or skewer type)
20 drops of citronella essential oil
10 drops of real lavender essential oil
10 drops of rose geranium essential oil

Note:if you don't have a cotton wick, you can use a simple kitchen string. If you don't have beeswax, you can also melt old candles. This is a good way to recycle pieces of wax and leftover candles.

Why use essential oils?

In this homemade candle recipe, citronella, true lavender and rose geranium essential oils act as natural mosquito repellents.

These three repellent plants, well known for keeping mosquitoes away in the garden, will work synergistically when you burn the candle.

The whole point of making a mosquito repellent candle lies in its composition, which is both natural and effective. The combustion of the candle will allow to diffuse these essential oils in the atmosphere and thus to push back these biting insects which spoil our life every summer.

Moreover, unless you suffer from an allergy to one of these essential oils, they are less harmful to your health and to the environment than the chemical repellents sold in the shops.

What are the manufacturing steps?

It is quite easy and quick to make a mosquito repellent candle yourself. The simple method we show you below involves only 5 steps to make.

1- Start by detailing the beeswax (or your leftover candles) into small flakes using a grater or paring knife. Place the resulting flakes in your glass jar.

2- Boil water in a saucepan and melt the wax in the jar in a double boiler. When it is melted, add the vegetable oil and mix.

3- Remove the pot from the water bath before adding the lavender, lemongrass and rose geranium essential oils. In fact, essential oils should always be added to your preparations outside the heat.

4- Dip the cotton wick or kitchen string into the jar, making it stick out from the surface of your candle. Use the wooden chopstick, laid across the jar, to hold the wick straight while the beeswax hardens. To do this, simply use a fairly long wick or string and wrap its end around the wooden wand.

5- Now all you have to do is let your homemade candle harden. It is recommended that beeswax candles be allowed to cool for 24 hours or, at a minimum, overnight.

To note: once the candle has hardened, cut the wick to a height of 0.5 cm before lighting it. The wick should not exceed this length, otherwise your candle's flame will be too long.