Wicks the early stages of candle making

We get a lot of questions as to where hemp wick came from. Just to set the record straight no one in this day and age invented the hemp wick. In fact candles started out a lot more like a wick than the candles as we know them .Wicks made from hemp go as far back as ancient Egypt. Tallow (rendered animal fat) was melted to its liquid form and poured over fibers of hemp, flax, or cotton, resembling the hemp wick as we now know it. Then during the Roman empire it was evolved to the candle we know today. A major improvement came in the Middle Ages, when beeswax candles were introduced. Beeswax burned pure and clean, without producing a smoky flame. It also emitted a pleasant sweet smell rather than the foul, acrid odor of tallow. So with the newer improved version of candles , wicks were really only needed in candle making.


Resurgence of the wick with out the candle

There is not much said in recent history about the wick without the whole candle involved, and this is where it gets a little foggy with only stories passed down from old timers. It's been said back in the 60s/70s there were some smokers lighting their herb with waxed flax, jute, hemp or cotton. Some say it's where the word dope originated because the cops used to refer to the dopes smoking with their rope. In fact, before we decided on the name Bee Line, we were considering the name Dope Rope :)


Hemp wick

Fast forward 30 years and again wicks had fallen away in popularity aside from being part of a candle. This was due partly because lighters had evolved and gotten cheaper and easier to use. Beeswax was no longer used  in conjunction with hemp. The closest hemp and wax got was people would polish hemp with paraffin wax for jewelry making. 

Though wicks made of hemp have been around for thousands of years, it has never been referred to as hemp wick and there had never been a hemp wick company before Bee line. In 2005 our company was founded in Maui as Bee Line Hawaii (because we had not come up with the term hemp wick yet) and we reintroduced the world to wicks . For 3 years our hemp wicks were called anything from bee line, to burning string to hemp lighters, in 2008 we coined the term hemp wick and became Bee Line Hemp Wick. Since then countless knock offs have emerged , but it's all good because we consider imitation to be the sincerest form of flattery.


Used today to avoid lighting your smoke directly with a lighter, ironically wicks are a fundamental part in most lighters function.