21 May 2020
It’s none of your beeswax is a rather common slang expression, with beeswax substituting for business. There doesn’t seem to be any metaphorical significance behind the substitution. Rather, it’s just that the two words alliterate and sound vaguely alike.
The phrase appears in the San Francisco Examiner of 30 July 1928 and is given a date of 1906, but no explanation or citation for the earlier date is given:
Withering retort, 1906—
“None of your beeswax!”
The phrase is also recorded in Marian Hurd McNeely’s 1929 children’s book The Jumping-Off Place, about life on the South Dakota prairie:
Joan quickly concealed both bottle and ring. No use in exhibiting her treasures all at once; it would prolong the pleasure to produce them one at a time. Moreover, they wouldn't have to be shared so generously. But she opened the package of gum, took out a thin wedge of Yucatan for Phil and a mint stick for herself; then put the rest away. When Phil came back her jaws were busy. She produced his stick.
"Where'd you get it?"
"None of your beeswax," answered his sister.
So, while it is likely somewhat older, it seems to have first become widely popular in the late 1920s.
There is one older form of the phrase that doesn’t use the word beeswax that appears in 1913. In Thomas “TAD” Dorgan’s comic strip Silk Hat Harry’s Divorce Suit of 30 April, the title character knocks on a door and when the character inside asks what he wants he says:
Its none of your stomach ache I don’t want you SEND KELLY OUT
Silk Hat Harry’s Divorce Suit, by T. A. “Tad” Dorgan, 30 April 1930
It’s likely that in the early years the phrase floated about with various words inserted to refer to business, concern, or worry.
Sources:
Cook, Ted. “Cook-Coos.” San Francisco Examiner, 30 July 1928. 16.
Dorgan, Thomas A. “TAD.” “Silk Hat Harry’s Divorce Suit.” Omaha Bee, 30 April 1913, 12.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. beeswax, n.2.