Post by steffenkd

Two months ago I impregnated my cotton jacket with 100% bees wax.

Make sure the block of beeswax is around 25-30 degree Celsius, then rub it all over the jacket so a small layer keeps attached.
Then get a "hot air gun" and blow-dry onto the jacket, so the beeswax can melt and soak in (not sure about the vocab here, but I hope whoever reads it can make sense of it).

Two problems appeared:

• it wasn't waterproof at all. My theory is, that since it is 100% beeswax without any paraffin, the beeswax gets hard and when the cloth "moves", the bees wax gets 10000 of small cracks, where water can move in.
  Bees wax with paraffin or something similar seems to be oily enough, so that the "cracks" get immediately sealed with oil.

• I already registered, that this autumn, a surplus of bees have been in my room, obviously triggered by the smell of my jacket. I took a glas and a paper and moved them out and haven't spent much thought on it.
  Yesterday I made a biketour and guess what. After two kilometres something started to hurt really bad on my left arm.
  Couldn't get out of that jacket fast enough. When I looked at my arm I could see a sting still standing out. After turning around the jacket, a dead bee was in there.

100% natural materials sounds awesome, but in this case I will probably go for another option. Maybe the commercial combination with paraffin is a good choice and the bees won't be attracted that much because of the paraffin smell.
There are also solution with some seedoils, but I am not sure about the smell and if it attracts mites or similar little creatures.