A besom is built the way any working broom is built, birch twigs bound tightly around the base of a handle, traditionally ash or hazel, using flexible withies of willow or hazel to lash the bundle on, a genuine rural craft with its own specialist makers, historically called broom squires in parts of Britain, who supplied ordinary farm and household brooms centuries before any Pagan ritual use of the object existed.
From working tool to ritual object
Because the besom was a common household item, its adoption into modern Wiccan and Pagan practice reused an already familiar shape rather than inventing a new one, and most besoms used in ritual today are either bought from the small number of surviving traditional broom makers or built by hobbyist practitioners following the same basic binding technique on a smaller, lighter scale than a working farm broom.
Ritual use and retirement
In ritual practice a besom is generally used to symbolically sweep a space clean of unwanted influence before a rite begins, a gesture rather than actual cleaning, and it lends its name to the custom of jumping the broom at a handfasting. A besom worn down through use is often burned deliberately, at a Beltane fire in particular, rather than thrown out with household rubbish, a small act of respect for an object that has done its job.