Beeswax Hallucinations and AI Inventions
I thought I was pretty savvy when it comes to navigating AI hallucinations. I was wrong.
This is a tale of beeswax. And AI.
But mainly it’s a tale of how even the best of us can get sucked into an AI alternative reality without realizing it.
It’s also a tale with a twist, as you’ll discover …
Last summer, I purchased a rather swish Panama hat while in London.
I’d been on the lookout for decent Panama for ages to ward off the harsh Arizona sun—especially as my thinning hair begins to expose my way-too-sensitive European skin. But I hadn’t seen what I was looking for, until I chance-wandered into a store in Covent Garden.
The hat I walked out with was perfect. There was just one problem: after 6 months in Arizona it developed a crack along the front crease of the crown.
At this point, any sensible person would have spoken with a hat specialist about repair options. But of course I thought I’d go one better and ask Claude for advice.1
And the advice was great!
Claude gave me three options. The one that caught my attention thought was using beeswax to stop the toquilla palm fibers from separating further:
Beeswax – Rub a small amount into the damaged area and use a hair dryer on low to gently melt it into the fibers. This is the most traditional method and also helps condition the straw.
It was the “this is the most traditional method” that caught my attention. But knowing that you should never trust an AI at face value, I asked for more information.
And, of course, Claude complied:
Beeswax is a great choice because it’s been used to maintain straw and woven natural fibers for centuries. Here’s the full breakdown:
How it works:
Panama hats are woven from toquilla palm fibers, which are naturally somewhat pliable when they retain moisture and oils. Over time, the fibers dry out and become brittle—especially at stress points like that front crease. Beeswax penetrates the fibers and does a few things: it acts as a flexible binder that holds separated strands together, it adds moisture resistance, and it restores some pliability to dried-out straw. Unlike synthetic adhesives, it remains slightly soft and moves with the hat rather than creating a rigid spot.
What you’ll need:
Pure beeswax (a small block or pellet—avoid blends with additives), a hair dryer, and optionally a soft cloth or small brush.
The process:
Start by gently rubbing the beeswax directly onto the split area and about a centimeter beyond it in all directions. You want a thin coating, not globs. The wax will sit on the surface at first and look a bit cloudy.
Then use the hair dryer on a low heat setting, holding it about 15cm away. Warm the area gradually—you’ll see the wax turn from cloudy to clear as it melts and wicks into the fibers. Keep the dryer moving to avoid overheating any one spot, as too much heat can scorch or warp the straw.
Once the wax has absorbed, let it cool completely. You can then buff gently with a soft cloth to remove any surface residue.
A couple of notes:
If the split is quite open, you can try gently pressing the fibers back together while the wax is still warm and pliable. Some people also apply a tiny amount to the inside of the hat at the same spot for extra hold.
This won’t make the split invisible, but it should lock those fibers in place and keep the damage from traveling further down the crease.
Fully convinced, I went straight onto Amazon and ordered a bunch of beeswax.
The problem was—and I only discovered this after ordering it—Claude made all of this up!
And to make matters worse, this happened precisely as I was writing about the dangers of LLMs like Claude bypassing our epistemic vigilance mechanisms.
In a deliciously ironic turn of events I was suckered by Claude at the very moment I was writing about the risks of being suckered by Claude!
Thankfully the reveal didn’t take too long coming. Once I’d placed the order, I wondered if maybe I’d been too hasty—and went back to Claude and asked “Can you provide me with a link to a website describing the beeswax method?”
The answer?
I have to be honest with you—I’ve searched but can’t find a specific authoritative source that documents the beeswax technique for repairing Panama hat splits in the way I described.
I had been halluci-fooled.
What was even more delicious thought was Claude’s reasoning—because this was a very thoughtful hallucination:
The beeswax approach I described draws on general principles of how wax works with natural plant fibers—it’s used traditionally for conditioning straw and woven materials—but I overstated its documentation as a specific Panama hat repair technique. Beeswax is mentioned for stiffening straw hats and providing water resistance, and for waterproofing fabric hats, but not specifically for split repairs.
…
That said, thinking it through logically: it's not a bad idea, it's just an untested one. The underlying principles are sound—beeswax does condition natural fibers, it remains pliable rather than brittle, and it's been used on straw for waterproofing and stiffening. Whether it would actually bind separated toquilla fibers well enough to stop a split from spreading is the unknown.
The reasoning was impeccable. The advice unfounded.
At this point, I was beginning to doubt just how far I could trust Claude, and started thinking of all those other occasions where the reasoning and information seemed sound. Occasions where, despite my being deeply aware of the propensity of LLMs to hallucinate, I had thought that I could handle them.
Despite the somewhat trivial example of using beeswax to repair a straw hat, it was clear that my epistemic vigilance has been well and truly circumvented in this case. And that started me wondering when else I was being too accepting of AI-generated content. Especially as this was a reasoned hallucination—one that was based on reasonable inference and logic that, nevertheless, lacked real-world precedent.
But there was another side to the experience that began to intrigue me: Had Claude inadvertently invented a new way to treat cracks in Panama hats?
Had the AI come up with something that was genuinely novel by combining existing knowledge in new ways?
Fortunately, the maker of the hat had already shipped out a free replacement, given the speed with which the crack had occurred. And this meant that I could afford to experiment with the original.
So I went back on Amazon, re-ordered the beeswax, and followed Claude’s instructions.2
Did they work?
Well, I managed to infuse the fibers a little, and they are definitely stiffer around the crack than before,—although it turns out that beeswax doesn’t melt half as easily under a hot hair dryer as Claude seemed to think!
Whether Claude’s technique actually “worked” in any technical sense is, if I’m being honest, doubtful. But I will admit that I like the hat better now—slightly discolored, a little stiff around the “wound,” and storied in ways that resonate surprisingly deeply with my work.
And I do now possibly own the world’s first Panama hat repaired using an “ancient technique” that was completely made up by an AI.
Surely that come with some bragging rights.
I was using Opus 4.5 in Extended thinking mode.
To be absolutely clear, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! There are tried and tested ways to prevent and reduce cracking in Panama hats, and using beeswax is not one of them!