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Best Candles to Keep Wasps Away From Your Outdoor Table: What Actually Works

October 17, 2026 by MBur Candle Co.

If wasps keep landing on your plate every time you eat outside, the citronella candle in the middle of the table was probably never going to stop them. Citronella built its reputation on mosquitoes. Against yellowjackets, the striped wasps that crash summer meals, researchers have found its effect is weak and uneven. A hungry wasp will often fly straight past the flame to reach your glass.

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That raises a fair question. If the candle everyone buys for the patio barely slows wasps down, is any candle worth putting on the table? Yes, though the real fix starts before you strike a match. It comes down to what the wasp is hunting and which scents its nose steers around. It also helps to burn a candle that stays clean beside your food, which is why the 100% beeswax candles we hand pour in New York City skip paraffin entirely.

Why wasps get bolder at your table as summer goes on

Early in the season, wasps mostly leave you alone. Worker wasps spend spring and early summer hunting other insects to feed the larvae back in the nest. The larvae pay them back with a sugary liquid the workers drink, and that trade keeps the workers fed.

By late summer, often from August on, the colony stops raising new larvae. The sugar supply at home dries up, but the workers are still alive and still hungry. So they go looking for sugar and protein wherever they can find them. Your soda can and your grilled chicken both make the list.

This explains why the problem feels worse every week as summer winds down. The wasps have lost their food source at home, and your table is now the easiest replacement. Any fix has to start with that hunger, because it drives everything else.

The striped insect at your plate is almost always a wasp

Many people say “bees” when they mean the insects circling a picnic. Honeybees spend their days working flowers for nectar and pollen. They rarely show interest in a burger. The shiny yellow and black insect diving at your plate is almost always a yellowjacket or a paper wasp.

Knowing this changes the plan in two ways. First, it tells you what you are dealing with: a scavenger with a strong nose for food smells. Second, it tells you what to protect. Strong herbal scents can also put off honeybees and other pollinators, so the goal is a small scent zone around your food, kept well away from your flower beds.

We care about this one personally. Beeswax is a byproduct of honey production, so every candle we make depends on healthy honeybees and the beekeepers who tend them. The setup below is built to keep wasps away from your plate while the bees in your garden carry on with their work.

Three reasons your current setup keeps failing, ranked from the one you suspect to the one nobody checks

We ranked these in the order most people discover them. You have likely guessed the first one already. The last one hides in plain sight, sometimes in the candle itself.

1. Citronella is the wrong scent for wasps

Citronella oil comes from a grass closely related to lemongrass. It works mainly by masking the smells that pull biting insects toward you, which is useful against mosquitoes. Wasps respond to it far less.

In a study screening repellents against vespid wasps, citronella cut the number of yellowjackets drawn to a food lure, but only partway. Several other plant compounds did much better. So the candle on your table was helping a little, at a strength too low to matter once the wasps got hungry.

2. One candle covers far less ground than you think

Indoors, a candle's scent spreads well because the walls hold it in. Outside, the scent drifts up and away the moment it leaves the jar. The useful zone of a single candle in open air is small, roughly an arm's length, about one meter.

Wind shrinks that zone even more. A breeze across the patio carries the scent off in one direction and leaves the other side of the table bare. One candle at the far end of a long table protects the person sitting beside it and almost nobody else.

3. Something on the table smells like food, and sometimes it is the candle

Picture a weekend brunch on the patio. A pitcher of orange juice sits in the middle of the table, and beside it a candle that smells like ripe peaches and vanilla frosting. To you, that is a lovely table. To a hungry wasp, it reads as one large meal.

Sweet, fruity candle scents can mimic the very food smells wasps are hunting, which pulls them closer. Pest experts flag this as one of the most common outdoor mistakes. The swap is simple: bring the dessert scents inside and set a green, sharp scent on the patio, like our Slice of Life beeswax candle with spearmint and eucalyptus. Its notes are Spearmint, Eucalyptus, Tomato Leaf, Anise, Mint, with nothing fruity or sugary in the mix.

Put the three causes side by side and the answer starts to show itself. The wasp follows food smells, and a candle only works on the small patch of air close to its flame.

What actually keeps wasps away: take the food smell off the table, then put the right scent next to it

The answer has two parts, and the order matters. First, remove what the wasp came for. Then surround what is left with a scent wasps steer around, placed close enough to count.

Food control comes first because no scent outweighs an open can of soda. A wasp that can smell sugar a few feet away will push through almost any scent to reach it. Once drinks are covered and bowls have lids, the strongest food smells on the table fade, and a candle finally has a fair fight.

The second part is scent choice. In the same repellent research, compounds found in mint and clove oils brought wasp visits down close to zero. Pest experts point to these scent families for outdoor tables:

Spearmint and peppermint
Clove
Lemongrass
Rosemary
Geranium
Lavender

The mechanism is simple once you see it. Wasps find food by following odor trails through the air. A sharp, strong scent near your plate covers the smell of the food and crowds the wasp's scent receptors, so the trail it was following goes blurry.

Our candles are made for how a room or a table smells, and we have not tested them as a wasp repellent, so we will not claim they repel wasps. What we can tell you is which of our scents sit in the families above. We can also show you how to place them so the scent sits where the wasps come in.

How to set up your outdoor table, in order of what matters most

Work through these from the top. The first few steps do the heavy lifting, and the candle steps build on them.

Cover every drink. Use a lid or set a saucer over the glass. Cans are the worst offenders, because a wasp can crawl inside where you cannot see it.
Keep sweet and meaty food covered until you serve it. A mesh food cover over each platter blocks most of the smell. Serve straight from the kitchen when you can.
Move the trash. Seal the bin and set it at the far side of the yard. Rinse empty bottles before they go in.
Bring the sweet candles inside. Fruit and dessert scents belong indoors during late summer.
Choose a mint or clove scent for the table. Look for green, sharp notes with little or no sugar in the blend.
Place it within arm's reach of the food. On a small table, the center works. On a long one, set the candle beside the serving platter.
Use more than one on a long table. Place one about every meter so the scent zones overlap.
Block the wind. Keep the candle in its jar and set it on the side of the table sheltered by a wall or the house.
Light it before the food comes out. Fifteen to twenty minutes gives the wax time to form a melt pool and release scent around the table. Never leave a burning candle unattended.
Keep candles away from flower beds. Your scent zone belongs at the table. The garden belongs to the bees.

The right scent for each kind of outdoor table

Think about the patio after work. Two chairs, a plate of something off the grill, and a breeze coming across from the neighbor's yard. The food is savory, the light is going gold, and you want to sit there until it gets dark.

For that table, our Sunday Reset beeswax candle with peppermint and clove brings both of the scent families the research points to. Its notes are Peppermint, Clove, Cedar, Patchouli, Vanilla, Eucalyptus. The peppermint and eucalyptus open cold and sharp, and the clove follows, dark and warm, with cedar dry and woody at the base.

Slice of Life fits the brunch table and the herb garden crowd. It opens with crushed mint and a clean eucalyptus lift, and tomato leaf adds a green, just-snapped-stem edge. Both scents carry well, which matters outside, where open air thins a scent fast.

“They smell up a WHOLE room during the burn & even a while after blowing them out. I won't buy other candles anymore, they're just that good”

Paige, verified customer

A candle that fills a whole room indoors has more to give at an outdoor table. That strong scent throw is what you want working beside your plate.

Why beeswax is the wax to burn next to your food

The scent gets the attention, but the wax decides what else ends up in the air over your plate. Most candles on store shelves are made of paraffin. Paraffin starts as crude oil.

When refineries turn crude oil into fuels, a waxy residue is left behind. That residue is cleaned and bleached into candle wax. Paraffin is petroleum waste, and research has shown that burning it can release soot along with compounds like benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde. You would not want that drifting over a bowl of salad.

Beeswax comes from the hive. Bees build their honeycomb from it, and beekeepers melt and filter the wax after the honey harvest. Every MBur candle is 100% beeswax, a single-ingredient wax, scented with phthalate-free fragrance and colored with no chemical dyes. Phthalates are chemicals often used to make toxic fragrances last longer, and we leave them out.

Beeswax also has the highest melting point of any common candle wax. On a hot afternoon, the candle stays firm in the jar and burns slowly, which is why the 12 oz size runs 80+ hours. That size has two wooden wicks, which widen the melt pool and spread the scent across more of the surface.

The pushback we hear most, and how to answer each one at your table

“But I already burn citronella, and the wasps still come.”

That experience matches the research. Citronella reduces wasp visits only partway, and it struggles most when food is open on the table. Cover the food first, then swap the citronella for a mint or clove scent placed within arm's reach of the plates.

“But I do not want to drive the bees out of my garden.”

Placement solves this one. A candle's outdoor scent zone is small, about one meter, so a candle on the dining table stays at the dining table. Keep it off the garden path and away from flowering plants, and the pollinators keep their space.

“My balcony is small and catches a lot of wind.”

For a two-seat bistro table, the 5 oz size with its one wooden wick and 40-hour burn fits the space. Set it in the most sheltered corner of the table, closest to the wall. A small table needs less scent to cover it, so one candle placed well does the job.

“We host big dinners on a long table.”

A long table calls for the 12 oz size, because its two wooden wicks put more scent into the air. Use one candle near each serving area so the zones overlap down the table. Sunday Reset suits a savory grill night, and Slice of Life suits a brunch spread.

One safety note for every table. If you or anyone at the table has a sting allergy, follow your doctor's guidance and keep any prescribed treatment close by. A scented candle is part of a calmer table and has no place in a medical plan.

FAQ: candles and wasps outdoors

Do citronella candles actually keep wasps away?

They help a little at best. Citronella works mainly against mosquitoes, and studies on wasps show only a partial drop in visits. A sharper scent like the peppermint and clove in our Sunday Reset beeswax candle sits in the scent families that research ranks higher.

What smells do wasps hate the most?

Research and pest experts point to clove and mint first, with lemongrass and rosemary close behind. Our Slice of Life candle leans fully into mint, with notes of Spearmint, Eucalyptus, Tomato Leaf, Anise, Mint.

Will a candle that keeps wasps away scare off honeybees too?

Strong herbal scents can put off pollinators, so keep the candle at the table and away from flower beds. Honeybees rarely come to food anyway. A Slice of Life candle on the dining table covers your plate without reaching the garden.

How many candles do I need for a patio table?

Plan on one candle for about every meter of table, since each one covers a small zone in open air. For a long table, the 12 oz Sunday Reset candle with two wooden wicks puts out more scent per jar.

The candle to put on your outdoor table

Wasps come to your table because their food at home runs out in late summer, and they follow food smells straight to your plate. Cover the food first, then set a sharp mint or clove scent within arm's reach of it. That setup gives a candle a real job to do.

For a patio dining table, choose Slice of Life in the 12 oz, 80-hour size ($65). It makes a meal outside feel easy again, the kind where you stay at the table after the plates are cleared. Its notes are Spearmint, Eucalyptus, Tomato Leaf, Anise, Mint, with no fruit or sugar to pull wasps in, and its two wooden wicks spread that green scent across the table. It is 100% beeswax with phthalate-free fragrance, so nothing but clean wax burns beside your food.