Beeswax

Beeswax comes out of beehives and nothing else in Graveyard Keeper 2. No recipe produces it, no shop stocks it, and no corpse or fight drops it, so every piece you own was taken off a hive by hand.

There are two kinds of hive and they are not close to equivalent. The wild ones you find in the world hand over wax one harvest in four, while the Beehive you build hands over one or two every single time.

That gap is the whole guide, because beeswax sells for nothing on its own and the candles it becomes sell for up to five hundred.

A wild hive pays out one time in four

Wild hives sit around the world and need no tool at all. Four hits with your bare hands empties one, at one energy a hit, and each harvest also pays 2 toward the Farming track.

What you always get is one or two Honey. What you usually do not get is beeswax, because it is a one in four roll for a single unit. Three hives out of four give you none at all.

So a wild hive averages a quarter of a wax per harvest, which is why players who need wax in any quantity assume the game is stingy with it. The game is not stingy with it. You are using the wrong hive.

Your own Beehive pays out every time

The Beehive costs two Wooden Plank, one Bronze Detail and six Bronze Nails, and it is harvested exactly like a wild one: by hand, four hits, one energy each.

Every harvest gives three to six Honey and one or two beeswax. There is no roll on either, so a hive you built never sends you away empty the way a wild one does.

Averaged out that is one and a half beeswax a harvest against a quarter, so a built hive is six times the wax of a wild one, and more than double the honey on top. Both refill on their own after you strip them, so the only real cost is the walk.

The unlock is Beekeeping, in the Farming branch:

It is the fourth node on that line and the line is short. Gardening is 5, Fertilizers I is 10, Garden Improvement I is 30 and Beekeeping itself is 50, which is 95 from the start of the branch to your first hive.

Wax is worth nothing until it is a candle

No merchant in the game takes beeswax off your hands, and it carries no value of its own if one did. It has exactly two jobs: alchemy, where it is a common reagent, and candles.

All three candles are made at the Formulation Bench against blue mastery, each takes one Flax Thread alongside the wax, and each craft returns one candle.

A Simple Candle is two wax at blue mastery one and sells for a hundred. A Pretty Candle is three wax at mastery three for two hundred. A Magnificent Candle is four wax at mastery four for five hundred.

The Flax Thread comes off a Spinning Wheel and costs fifteen, which is the only other thing you need to keep in stock. The Honey the hive gives you alongside the wax is not waste either, since it goes into Mead at a Brewing Stand.

The one candle a quest asks for

Candles are mostly money, but exactly one is spoken for. During the questline to clear the forest mine, Larry the talking skull agrees to impersonate the dead bandit leader Robert and talk the gang out of their explosives, and he has conditions.

We should do it at night. It’s more dramatic. / Just remember to bring a candle. I want to look my spooky best.

Larry, setting the terms

The candle goes inside him, which is the part he does not mention until you are standing there. It has to be a Simple Candle specifically, so the expensive tiers will not do the job however many you are carrying.

Put a candle inside. / Ok, lets do this! I’ll be in your bag.

Larry, once the candle is handed over

It is worth keeping one Simple Candle back for this rather than selling the pair, because the alternative is a walk to the Formulation Bench at the exact moment the quest is ready to move.