Closing Down info

On 8th August 2025, I announced that I am closing Queen B.  I am burnt out (pun intended). 

I still absolutely love making 'pure light', chatting to and solving problems for customers and working with bees & our beekeepers.  Unfortunately, I get to do that about 10% of my time... I spend 90% of my time on things I hate doing*

When I sent the email announcing that we would be closing the response was overwhelming (to say the least). 

Literally hundreds of beautiful emails (which I haven't had the time to read or respond to - which rests unwell with me) and the equivalent of 5 months or orders within 3 weeks!!! 

We are currently out of stock of all of our best sellers.

We are making to order. 

 We are working through a backlog of orders &
orders may take up to 4 weeks to be dispatched. 


To add to the fun, our candlemaker left giving no notice.  She had proposed working 30 hours a week for 'free' after which I would gift her 50% of Queen B (😂).  I gave her paid employment instead, so that she could get an idea of what was involved.  I was repaid by her giving notice via text message on a Sunday saying she wouldn't be back. Point made and I'm back on the tools!  Fran is on admin & order packing... please be gentle.

To be honest, this feels perfect.  Queen B started 25 years ago with me hand making every Queen B candle, and so it will be as I wind the business up.  It feels like a beautiful sense of closure. 

Queen B has never, and now never will, compromise.

The closing down plan currently looks like this:

  1. Tomorrow - midnight Friday 5th September 2025 - the Closing Down, NOJOKE, discount code expires.  That's almost a month longer than intended.

    I had actually intended for the code to be a 72 hour code - like all of our newsletter codes - but as I forgot to write that at 1am after a 17 hour day!!  And with everyone now knowing their 'rights', it's another reason I'm closing.  In small business, it is actually hard to get everything right these days... and the consequences are extremely costly when you don't.

  2. Sunday, 14th September (midnight) - orders close for all tealight candles.

  3. Sunday, 14th September (midnight) - orders close for all hand-rolled candles (with the exception of a limited edition design we'll be bringing back based on popular demand before we close)!

Given our current backlog of orders, our 'orders close for' are happening quicker than expected.  

We still have 2 more major launches before we close - both are new pillar candle designs that have been in the planning for months... long before I hit the brick wall and decided to close.

Thank you for the love, for the emails (please keep both of those coming... they will sustain me in the weeks and months ahead).  Thank you for your patience with your order - hand made takes time and whilst we made it look easy for 25 years, it wasn't!  Thank you for your support... it is humbling and has provided many Australian jobs.  And most of all, thank you for tolerating my verboseness... 

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*Things I hate doing...

  • being a bursar & bookkeeper for the ATO (and then being fined when after 25 years of paying tax on time, I get inundated with sales and focus on customers and pay an Annual Return late). When my parents had their small business, they did 1 tax return a year.  I do, 26 x Single Touch payroll filings, 8 x Installment Activity Statements; 4 x Business Activity Statements, 4 x Superannuation payments (soon to be 26); 1 x Annual Return and 1 x tax return.  Yes, 43 x red tape tax office filings (and 43 opportunities for them to automatically fine me if I pay late)

  • filling in (stupid) government (and non government) forms and arse covering legal documentation absolving themselves of responsibility for doing their job; 

  • answering inane questions which we've answered on the website;

  • managing the onerous, and frankly quite frightening, legal requirements of employing someone under the Manufacturing Award (and being instructed that I am legally obligated to give staff a 'roster' (even thought they are employed permanently for the same hours), and for them to fill in a 'timesheet' (even though I was happy for them to manage themselves and to take untimed breaks whenever they wanted) and to pay 17% leave loading... these are huge burdens on a small business and take the enjoyment out of being friends or quasi family with your staff.

  • ditto every time the government put superannuation up because they can't manage their budget and pension costs, so they get business to pay... on top of the tax they're paying... well that's if you're a small business and you're actually paying tax.  Of course if you're a billionaire or a global technology company or a mining company then you're most likely not actually paying any tax which they government don't seem to have done much about in the past decade)

  • ditto Fair Work changing sick leave to 'personal leave' and employees thinking of this as just another type of annual leave or mental health day... so we now pay for 4 weeks of annual leave, 10 public holidays (that's another 2 weeks) and 2 weeks of 'personal leave'; and then up to 2 weeks family and domestic violence leave and up to 2 days per occasion of bereavement leave... Yes, a small business is paying someone to not work for 8 weeks a year (that's 1/6th of the year) AND potentially another 2+ weeks.  Union demands and weak government are actually killing small business just as they killed the Australian car manufacturing industry and they've made Australia one of the most expensive countries in the world to build in.

  • trying to find missing parcels (that courier companies are responsible for losing but Fair Trading say is our responsibility 🤔);

  • resolving problems with smashed parcels (that courier companies are responsible for smashing but Fair Trading say is our responsibility 🤔); 

  • managing staff (who these days are very well versed on their "entitlements" but not so well versed on their obligations;

  • social media

    etc!