Never above eighty-five

Pour temperature is not one number, it depends on what you are pouring:

• Container candles want the wax hottest, seventy-one to seventy-seven degrees Celsius, so it bonds properly to the glass or tin wall.
• Pillars and tapers poured into a mould take a slightly cooler sixty-eight to seventy-one degrees.
• Dipped tapers, built up one thin layer at a time, are dipped at sixty-eight throughout, since the wax only needs to coat what is already there rather than fill a whole mould.

None of these figures go anywhere near the ceiling that matters most: beeswax discolours above eighty-five degrees, its pale gold darkening toward brown, and its vapour can ignite at two hundred and four.