Making Wax

I had some wax left over from last year's hive, even after I added bars of comb to the new hives, so I thought I'd try processing for wax. there are lots of videos on YouTube. so I followed one of those. I had an old Crock Pot I wasn't using, so I pressed it into service. Once you process wax with it, you can't use it for anythinig else - that's what the videos say and it's true.

I addeded as much comb as would fit and as much water as it would take and started heating. After an hour, everything was melted. The videos suggested a kitchen strainer, but I used a piece of window screen as a strainer as you can see below. There is a lot of gunk, some call it "slumgum" that rises to the top and strains out. It's all organic so it went in the compost pile. I don't have pics of that, but it really is gunk - dead bees and other junk. This simple method works because the wax floats above the water.

When everything cooled in the bucket, I pulled out the layer of wax and dumped the dirty water below it. That was the first step.  I put the wax pieces back in the crock pot (pic below) and added some more water, but not a lot for a second screening.


After melting that, I put it through multiple layers of cheese cloth. the result is below. You lose some wax in the process, but get the remaining dirty bits out. This is not cost effective for small amounts of wax, but would work with more.

I used an old skillet instead of bucket since there wasn't that much to process. This is what it looks like as it starts to solidify. It cools fairly quickly.

This is the resulting wax, pretty clean. It came out as a circle because of the skillet shape (duh). It's about 10" across and 1/8" thick - not much, maybe a small candle. Still, it is nearly pure beeswax. 

I didn't expect it to be that yellow - church candles are supposed to be pure beeswax and they are white. Jeanne has old church candles; the pic below shows the difference.  Turns out the manufacturer only guarantees at least 51% beeswax.  I haven't looked for information on what the color should be - so I don't know if it varies or needs more filtering or what.

So that's the beeswax adventure. It will be a while before I try again. It depends on a supply of comb. I'll save whatever I find until I have enough. It will have to be kept cold, though. I left the other too long and wax moths started to eat it. I did enjoy killing the grubs, some of which were in the slum gum.