My guest today is Heidi Sanner, founder and managing member of Candle Bee Farm. We’ll be talking today about toxic elements in candles and how natural, toxic-free beeswax candles are made. Heidi is an eclectic personality who literally dreamed this venture into bee-ing. Heidi, who formerly worked as a CPA in one of the largest national firms, has turned an 83-acre farm and beekeeping activity into a thriving beeswax candle business. She calls it “Commerce with a Conscience…Candle Bee Farm™ is my opportunity to pull from all areas of my life, my business experience, love of nature and organic lifestyle and create products that are good for people.” She is an organic beekeeper and a chandelier (candle maker) by trade. Her exquisite, hand crafted 100% beeswax candles are sought and used by famous celebrities, exquisite restaurants, high end hotels and others of discerning taste. They have even been in Hollywood movies such Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator.” Heidi is an accomplished herbalist and naturalist, expert beekeeper and crafter of unique beeswax candles utilizing molding and press techniques developed by her ancestors. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/candle-bee-farm

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
“The Joy of Beeswax Candles”

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
GUEST: Heidi Sanner

DATE OF BROADCAST: December 12, 2013

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and we do that because there are so many toxic chemicals around in all kinds of things; in our consumer products , in our homes, in our bodies, in the air we breathe etcetera, etcetera, and there are also so many things that are not toxic, so many wonderful things that are not toxic; like organic food and natural toys and natural fiber clothing and I just love all these not toxic things.

Today we are going to talk about beeswax candles. It’s that time of year when we are celebrating the holidays. It’s also dark outside and traditionally there is this tradition of doing things like lighting fires and lighting candles to keep the light burning; the light of the sun going through the darkest nights of the year and so today we are going to talk about beeswax candles as a safe alternative to those other candles and how beautiful they are to use. It’s just…. (laughter); I will get myself together here.

My guest today is Heidi Sanner, Founder and Managing Member of Candle Bee Farm. We’ll be talking about, as I said, beeswax candles and she is.. you know what? I’m just going to say; hi Heidi and you can just tell us all about yourself (laughter..)

HEIDI SANNER: Hi Debra. Has the cold gotten to you up there?

DEBRA: No, actually what’s going on this morning is that I’m having trouble with my e-mail and so I’m back and forth trying to, like, handle all these technical problems and so I’m doing things at the last minute and usually I’m sitting here being very prepared. We’ll just get started and I don’t have your e-mail.

Heidi sent me a lovely e-mail with a lot of information and we talked about what the questions were going to be and everything and I just don’t have anything, so..

HEIDI SANNER: Well that’s great, that leaves it all up to me and I can talk about whatever I care to.

DEBRA: That’s right, you can; so why don’t you start by telling us all about yourself and specifically I’ll ask you the question; tell us about your business and what you do; but also tell us your story about how you became interested in this; where did you come from; what changed your mind; what changed your mind to make you raise bees and make candles and all of this?

HEIDI SANNER: Well, I’ll tell what; this endeavour has taught me that every piece and portion of our life is important and how it comes together and we don’t see it at the time but later all the pieces fit and you learn from them.

DEBRA: I totally agree.

HEIDI SANNER: In saying that, people who ask me the question you just asked me, they think my life and what I’ve done is so disjointed and if you look at it piece by piece, you would say yes, but in the end it all came together.

How I got into the natural side of living was that I really grew up that way. I was the daughter of German immigrants, so I spent summers with family in Europe and in Europe, especially then (I’ll give away my age here) in the 1960s, they lived very naturally still. They weren’t into the 1950s, 1960s, packaged foods and all those really neat over the counter, you know, goodies we could get here. They were still collecting herbs on every walk and hung them in their attics. My relatives still kept goats and they used dogs to herd them up in the mountains.

I know this sounds like a story but it really is true and my relatives also kept bees. That was their way of sweetening and Germans are big into their baking; they want their sweets, so yeah, I remember my grandfather’s bee houses; they kept them actually in houses and every bee hive had its own entrance and we would go in through the back with the little door; you know? They keep them that way because it’s so cold over there and he would be smoking his pipe and would tend these bees and it was really cool so that was in my memory bank.

They made their own soaps and everything was very natural in my life; how we ate and I grew up that way, so over here, fast forward to my life here in USA, I don’t know, you may have an international listener base.

DEBRA: We actually do have an international listener base.

HEIDI SANNER: Ok, ok. Well, I grew up in the USA though basically with summers in Europe, so I became, when I got out of college, a Medical Technologist. People think you tend bees; you have your bee keeping business so you must be really laid back and just you know, feed birds, drink tea and have a wonderful life. Honestly, no. You can probably hear it in my voice. I’m very Type A. I’m a very analytical; I’m very scientific oriented so what appealed to me was medical technology and I have a degree, a four (4) year degree and two (2) year internship in medical technology and I did my internship at a Veteran’s Hospital so I saw everything, everything in that type of environment.

Again, you are up for the good and the bad, it all pieces together and finally I couldn’t take that any more. It was so depressing and the hours were horrendous so I decided I would do something besides with a nine to five kind of job and have a life and what I picked was Certified Public Accounting. I became a CPA; yeah, like right; then I was really up all night doing taxes. I did that and worked in a corporate atmosphere, learnt how to run businesses and being Controller and Financial Analyst which I did enjoy because I like the sciences. I like that type of thing, problem solving but I couldn’t take the politics and after a lay off; I had in the meantime bought this farm and sort of built my home here; 183 acres in the hills of Kentucky and this was my place to have peace and I started keeping bees as a hobby because it appealed to me from of my roots.

After the layoff I just thought, I’m not doing this anymore; I’m not doing the rat race; I’m not going to be what other people want me to be. What can I do here on this farm that I can make a living off of; make something good for people; create non toxic products from renewable resources?

The bee keeping, that’s something I could do; you know? I can’t keep livestock by myself. I can’t farm, I didn’t have the equipment but I could do the bee keeping and I just grew that and grew it and that’s how they came about. I started making the beeswax candle just like my relatives did and that’s the history about how that evolved. It was not planned.

DEBRA: Well, often that’s the way it does and I must say that your candles are beautiful. They are unique and artistic and beautiful and it’s more than just, you know.., the little rolled up beeswax candle or even a dipped candle. These..; I really encourage everybody to go to your website which is, candlebeefarm.com and see the artistry that you put into these candles and I think you sent me in your bio that these are handcrafted and that they are sought after and used by famous celebrities and they are in exquisite restaurants and high end hotels and I can see why, because they really are those kinds of candles and they’ve been in Hollywood movies. So there’s this balance between this really beautiful artistic thing that you’ve created and the naturalness that are close to nature and having them be healthy and not toxic.

You know, when I first started looking for non toxic products I had this idea that the industrial consumer world was the standard. It’s like everything had to be like the industrial products and I soon found that the things that were handmade and natural and grown on farms and all these things, they were so much more lovely and pleasing to be with and your products really epitomize that, really embody that whole different world, and that’s as opposite from industrialism as you can get.

HEIDI SANNER: Thank you.

DEBRA: You’re welcome.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

DEBRA: Heidi, during the break I actually got the e-mail going, so I have the questions that we discussed so now that we know who you are, let’s talk about candles in general and some of the toxic exposures that people can get from ordinary candles.

HEIDI SANNER: Ok. You want me to take off?

DEBRA: Go ahead. Take off.

HEIDI SANNER: Well, I think, I can’t really speak for other candles because I don’t delve in other candles; the petroleum based, soy based, palm based. I deal with beeswax and I’ll tell you why. Beeswax, one hundred percent (100%) beeswax is the only wax that is naturally occurring in nature and if you think about it; I scrape it right out of the hive, filter it to get the bees knees out of it and it goes right into the candle. There is nothing in between, there is nothing added whatsoever. It doesn’t need to be, most manufacturers do and we can delve into why later but beeswax is the only true wax. You cannot take a soy plant and make it into a wax without adding something else which is, i.e., petroleum products. You can’t take a palm tree and make it into a candle without making it into a wax; it’s not a wax.
This is all.., you mentioned about toxic products and what we have to be careful of is, these are all marketing schemes and we get lulled very easily into these gentle sounding, beautiful terminology, words that when you start to deduct it down, it’s like, wait a minute, I’m burning a soy plant and smelling it; no, so beeswax is wax. It’s made from the bee’s thorax; they make it in little shavings, little discs just like a spider spins a web, a bee makes beeswax. We don’t have to add anything to it.
The other thing to be very careful of if you buy a beeswax candle is; does it say one hundred percent (100%) beeswax? because if it doesn’t say 100% beeswax, it’s only fifty percent (50%) beeswax.

DEBRA: Well what are they mixing it with?

HEIDI SANNER: Petroleum products. They are mixing it with your basic petroleum wax.

DEBRA: Yeah, there’s something I’d like to say here in response to what you said. Throughout all different kinds of products I’ve found that and I’ll just use as an example; say the cosmetic industry because when I first started doing this more than thirty (30) years ago, what were called natural cosmetics were cosmetics where the original source material might have come from a coconut or something like that, that is, natural renewable resource but then it got processed and mixed with petrochemicals and petroleum so it was no longer a coconut. It was no longer what you found in nature.

HEIDI SANNER: Right, or it has been cooked down and the properties of what you are buying are no longer in there.
DEBRA: Right. It’s not something of nature; it’s an industrialized nature.

HEIDI SANNER: Yeah; and generally it’s the opposite; it’s the basic industrial product that has a little natural thrown in it or they take the petroleum base product and throw a little coconut oil in there and call it natural.

DEBRA: Right, but that’s another way to do it. But the point I’m trying to make is that there are natural materials that comes directly from nature. It’s made by nature, like an apple is made by nature and you eat it in its natural form and I want to be really sure that you’re saying that beeswax comes from nature in the state that you see it in the beeswax candle. It’s just like eating an apple, it’s that natural and even though you may see on the label, things like soy and palm and hemp or other vegetable waxes, as you said, you can’t burn those plants but they need to be transformed into these waxes. They need to have the wax pulled out of them or they need to have the wax mixed with petroleum or whatever to make it burn and so they are kind of misleading or air socked I think is the word but I think most people don’t know what air socked means. It’s like it’s pretend; it’s says that it’s something but it’s not 100%, as you said and this is something that happens all throughout industry. It’s that something is labeled to be natural but it’s not; so I think that it is a very, very good point that you made and I am going to make sure that everybody gets it; that beeswax is the only thing, the only wax that when you have a beeswax candle it’s absolutely a hundred percent nature made by the bees.

HEIDI SANNER: Correct and make sure it says 100% beeswax.

DEBRA: Yes.

HEIDI SANNER: Even within the manufacturers that make 100% beeswax because if it’s not, it’s 50/50 something else. Even the manufacturers that say 100% beeswax often add hardeners to the wax. This gives it a little more of a sheen and makes it …

Beeswax is rather soft; if you hold one of my candles…, I’ve had a man once said, my goodness, they touch you back. It’s because it’s a very soft energetic type of feeling. It’s a softer wax, it feels different, it’s denser, it’s heavier than you’re used to when you pick up a candle. Beeswax candles are very heavy and condensed; 100% as compared to any other candle you would pick up so they are more expensive to ship also but that’s ok.

That’s the other thing, make sure it says100% and then within that, ask your manufacturer, are there any chemicals added and they’ll say no because they won’t even consider that a chemical is just part of their process; that there are hardeners and there are chemicals used to make the candle molds release faster. There are all kinds of things within the process that we don’t know about that you have to be very careful of.

They tell me I’m nuts for not adding these things. I just refuse to but then I get the sensitive people in my market who know; they know the value of my candles so that’s important to me and I don’t mind.

DEBRA: I think that one of the good things about ordering products directly from the person who makes them.., I mean, here you are directly collecting the beeswax from the hive and making it into a candle so you know what’s in it and what isn’t in it and that’s in comparison to somebody who is, say, buying the beeswax from someone else and then making an end product.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

DEBRA: Heidi, how is beeswax different from other waxes; isn’t a flame a flame, a flame, a flame? I know one of the ways it’s different is that it smells gorgeous; I love having that honey smell when I burn my beeswax candles.

HEIDI SANNER: Well, it’s very different, you know, aside from what we just talked about, the makeup of it; actually it burns differently also. The flame of a 100% beeswax is stronger, it’s larger; it’s taller it’s much brighter, very bright flame and the reason is, beeswax is the only wax that when it burns it’s totally consumed within the flame and that’s why it burns non toxic, hypoallergenic, smokeless, dripless, sootless because theoretically, there is nothing given off; it’s all consumed within the flame and that’s the phenomenon that makes it the perfect non toxic product, the only non toxic wax to burn in a candle.

DEBRA: Wow! I didn’t know that about beeswax candles. Can you tell us about the wicks that are used because I that know that there are lead wicks in some candles? Of course there would not be lead wicks in yours?

HEIDI SANNER: No, I use 100% cotton. There are lead wicks, there are paper wicks, there are lead core, paper core wicks, there are cotton wicks that are lead core, cotton wicks that are paper and there are all kinds of tricks to the trade but what you want is 100% cotton wick. They burn the cleanest, they burn most totally with the least amount of emission and even within the 100% cotton wicks, again, you have to be careful because how was that cotton processed into a wick, was it given acid rinses, lubricants, what was the process in the weaving? So you need a true natural fiber and of all what we’ve just listed, lead, paper; cotton is actually the only true natural fiber.

Now there have been experiments with hemp wicks. The only thing is, from what I’ve found, my personal experiments and research and what I’ve done here is that the hemp does not uptake the beeswax very well.

DEBRA: Now hemp is a denser fiber.

HEIDI SANNER: Yeah, it will not uptake the wax and the flame doesn’t stay lit. I could not get it to work whereas the cotton is very absorbent, much more absorbent and absorbs the wax and it all goes away and it’s just beautiful and you have your wonderful non toxic candle.

DEBRA: I just love beeswax candles; I do.

So, what about essential oils or other scents that are added to candles?

HEIDI SANNER: Yes; I’m sorry. You mentioned that they smell so good; the reason that they smell so good or Candle Bee Farm candles smell so good is because we do not add anything. The beehive itself is enthused with the smell of honey and it’s totally natural and it comes through in the wax, in the yellow wax.
Now if you want a white wax candle, we filter it. We have to filter it at least five (5) times to get it back to an off white, whiter ivory colour. It will never be white, white here because we

don’t bleach but even our ivory coloured ones will have less scent because I’m also filtering out that honey scent and that is naturally in there. It’s an aroma. I hate to use the word scent because we associate that with something we put in.

DEBRA: Right. No, I think aroma is a really good word and it’s just so lovely. It’s just so warm; I only burn just the natural yellow beeswax candles.

HEIDI SANNER: and Debra, please let me talk to essential oils because this is extremely important.

DEBRA: Oh, please do, please do.

HEIDI SANNER: People are very confused about this. I get e-mails and people get mad at me because I will not put essential oils in my candles and make them smell like rose or lavender and here’s what I’m going to say about that. Essential oils are wonderful; put them in your bath water, sprinkle them on your pillowcase, put them on your wrist, that’s aromatherapy, yes, wonderful! However, think about this, a tobacco plant growing in this field is a beautiful flower and we can go out and smell that flower, we can smell the tobacco plant and that’s wonderful, but it’s not meant to be burned and inhaled. The minute we burn it and inhale it, it’s not good for us. Right?

DEBRA: Right.

HEIDI SANNER: Ok, the same is true for a rose or lavender or any of these things that essential oils are made out of. They are condensed, they condense the scent; they’re in a carrier oil and even if it’s all a perfectly strained process, it is wonderful to smell it; it is not meant to be burned and inhaled and then it is still dangerous. It’s still toxic and I want to make sure people understand that and that’s the reason I will not use them in my candles.

DEBRA: Thank you. That’s a very important point. So, are there any manufacturing guidelines or restrictions or labeling laws or any kind of laws that relate to candles for public protection?

HEIDI SANNER: Oh, sadly, actually there are not but the Environmental Protection Agency in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) has done studies about safety within an enclosed room. They conducted an extensive study; I think it was in 2001 they actually did a scientific setup in a 15’ x 12’ room with 10’ ceilings which is a pretty big room; not many of us have 10’ ceilings and 15’ x 12’ and they burned all these different types of candles and they have a set limit of what they consider safe to breathe in of lead and petrochemicals; if you think any of that’s safe but it was like 1.5..

DEBRA: There is no safe level.

HEIDI SANNER: No. Well, their safe levels (are official safe levels) were 1.5 micro grams per cubic metre. Now when they did the study and they revised it later, like 2004, 2005 (you can look it up on the CDC website) they found that burning a candle in that big of a room for one (1) hour (I forget the size of the candle but it was a one wick candle) exceeded their acceptable levels by thirteen percent (13%).

Burning it for five (5) hours exceeded acceptable levels by twenty seven percent (27%) and if you added multi wicks or multi candles that would be even worse so that’s pretty scary and that was unscented candles. If they had added scents or any additives to these candles it would have been even worse so it gives you an idea of what you are breathing in when we burn other types of candles. So, 100% beeswax is the only candle deemed to be non toxic.
DEBRA: Excellent! Excellent to find that out.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

DEBRA: Heidi, I’ve just been looking at your website during the break again. I looked at it earlier and you have so many different kinds of candles and there are different types, so why don’t you tell us about the different ways that you can turn beeswax into candles?

HEIDI SANNER: Well, I have to disagree a little bit. I don’t turn beeswax into anything; the wax is naturally in the honeycomb.

DEBRA: Well, maybe I mis-spelt; you have beeswax and then it becomes a candle and I’m looking at these and I see you have tapers and I see that you have the kind that are rolled up then I see you have some that look like they’re carved. How do you fashion the wax into candles? Is that a better way to put it?

HEIDI SANNER: Yes. The wax is actually the honeycomb within the hive. The honeycomb is made of wax. Now they store the honey in the honeycomb so when we as beekeepers extract the honey, you’re left with the honeycomb, which is then returned to the hive but at the end of the season you don’t want all that returned because those hives get like five and eight storeys high and it will reduce them down so that the bees will actually survive over the winter so that they can heat a smaller space; if that makes sense and they will regenerate that honeycomb in spring and it’s their natural way of doing things. That’s what they would do in the wilds even; they would do that within a tree; they would cut that down into a smaller space so that they can keep warm over the winter.

This left over honeycomb is then heated down. It will melt at 140 degrees, so, that’s another important aspect of different ways of making candle. Here we use the Solar Melter; which is just glass under the sun in a big pan about as big as a screen door. As big as someone’s front door and it goes through there and it goes through a wire grate and several types of

filtration until we get it clean because there is stuff in there, you know, bees die in the hive, bees defecate, you want all that out of there; it all gets filtered out through different filtrations and what you use to filter is very important as well. We use only natural increasingly smaller and smaller filters so as it’s warmed by the sun it goes down through these little gutters and we come out with hives. It’s a very time consuming process but it’s a natural process.

DEBRA: It just seems so beautiful to me. Listening to this I can see the wax; I’ve seen beehives so I know exactly what you are talking about so I can see the wax being made by the bees and coming out of the hive, and going in your solar pan with the glass on it and the sun, the light of the sun and then it turns into a candle and then you burn the light and it just all seems like such a beautiful natural process.

HEIDI SANNER: Yeah, when you do it that way it preserves all the properties that was in there to begin with that nature put in and that’s what I like about it, plus I don’t have much cooking and burning and if you overheat beeswax, like I said, it burns at 140 degrees. If you overheat it, it actually will not perform well in the candle which is why Candle Bee Farm’s candles perform very well because it’s their first burning, so to speak. I never recommend taking a beeswax candle and melting it down to make it into another candle. I would never do that, it’s just that it won’t perform correctly.

DEBRA: Wow! I didn’t know that either; so then what’s behind it?

HEIDI SANNER: There’s a lot of science behind it. When you really do it correctly and very few people know how to do that. You really need a Chandelier, which is a fancy word for expert candle maker, to know these things.

DEBRA: So once you have your melted beeswax then what do you do next?

HEIDI SANNER: Well, then I have the molds, pour them into the different molds and it takes about four (4) hours for each one to set up then you put your cotton wicks through your molds and you pour your beeswax in and then at the end of about four hours you gently peel off the mold and at that point you have your candle and there is still the leveling process and cutting the wicks to the proper size; inspection; they don’t all turn out all the time, little air bubbles get in there sometimes and that’s basically it. It’s a very old world process here.

DEBRA: How do you get those beautiful shapes, like I’m looking at your pillars that have little scroll work and textures and things; is that part of the mold or ..?

HEIDI SANNER: That’s a carved mold. Yes, we have a carving and had a mold made out of it, yeah.

DEBRA: I just love the way your candles look; so, I keep talking about these beautiful candles and I should tell our listeners that you have everything from just plain tapers. You also have the octagonal shaped tapers, you’ve got the rolled honeycomb kind of candles, you’ve got tea lights, you’ve got little tapers that you can use as birthday candles and you’ve got these other beautiful ones too. You’ve got molds for animal shapes and angels and gargoyles and did I leave anything out? and even an ear of corn.

HEIDI SANNER: The lanterns.

DEBRA: The lanterns, tell us about the lanterns.

HEIDI SANNER: They are beeswax lanterns and we set a beeswax tea light within the lantern. The lantern is decorated with wild flowers from the farm, real wild flowers, they’re embedded into the wax and it’s just a globe and the tea lights sits down into there and burns so it’s reusable; you just keep replacing the tea lights and when the lanterns burn it’s beautiful, you can see the silhouettes and the colours of the flowers come through. That’s always a very nice gift especially because it is reusable. I’ve got them scenting everywhere and that’s something rather unique.

DEBRA: Yeah, there is a beautiful picture of this on the website and I’m imagining that each one is unique and handmade of course because the flowers are from the farm so there’s no two alike. Yes, it’s very beautiful.

HEIDI SANNER: The best value.., and people say, why is beeswax so expensive? Well, through everything we just discussed plus our beeswax is organic, we do not use chemicals in our hives, which most, I would say ninety nine (99%) beekeepers do; but beeswax is actually of value because it burns five times longer than other waxes or wax combinations so in the long run you’re getting a better value; you get a longer burning, brighter flame and you have to be careful about the source of the wax as well.

I’m sorry; that didn’t answer your question. I’ve gotten off on track here.

DEBRA: It’s ok. What was my question you didn’t answer?

HEIDI SANNER: I don’t remember.

DEBRA: I don’t either. I’m just so fascinated by everything you’re saying and hearing all about how..,

As I said earlier, this is just about the most opposite as you can get from something that’s industrial but I want to really make this point because we rely so much in this culture on things being made in factories and things being made by machines that when you actually have a material that comes from nature where the bees are making it because it’s part of their own life process but then at the end of that they give it to us, it’s not like we’re taking anything from the bees that they need in order to live. It’s something that’s left over from their life process and then we can take that and turn it into something that’s a source of light and useful to us and it’s just, to me everything should be that way. We should just be able to take materials from nature that are offered to us by the other species and use them to our benefit so that there’s an interchange of life.

HEIDI SANNER: That all depends on good beekeeping, good animal husbandry where we respect our hives; we know what our bees need to keep for themselves and what we can take. Again, it helps both that way. That does get exploited a lot; I never understand why because those that exploit and take too much from the bees actually hurt themselves because next year they’re not gonna have that beehive.

DEBRA: It’s not gonna be there. Yes, yes.

HEIDI SANNER: If you do all this with an ear for what happens naturally, everybody wins, especially humans. Even with using the chemicals in the hives; I’ve always done that naturally plus my ancestors didn’t have chemicals so I knew no other way but most beekeepers will get in there and they’ll clean out what we call the drone cells which is the cells for the male bees. You don’t want too many male bees in your hive; all they do is eat and take up room, they don’t really contribute.

DEBRA: Laughter…

HEIDI SANNER: Yeah, we’ll just leave that hanging. (laughter)

DEBRA: I won’t comment on that.

HEIDI SANNER: Yes, it’s a very female universe in a beehive. All worker bees, all honey gatherers are female but if you clean out the drone cells, the drone cells are what attracts the mites, the varroa mites. That would happen naturally if we humans would just leave them alone.

DEBRA: Heidi, I need to interrupt you right now because we’ve only got about fifteen (15) seconds left.

HEIDI SANNER: Ok.

DEBRA: And so, I just want to thank you so much or being on the show and again tell my listeners that your website is; candlebeefarm.com and it’s really been a pleasure today. Thank you so much.

HEIDI SANNER: Oh. Well thanks for helping me get the word out to people and I think you can tell I’m very passionate about that.

DEBRA: Yes I can.