The bees have come through the summer fine and given a lot of honey in excess of what they have for themselves in the brood boxes that you see here. I have replaced some older wax frames and instead of throwing the dark wax away, have melted it off the frames in a self-made, improvised solar wax melter-- an old cool box and a pane of glass. This process yielded several blocks of wax and bee parts along with other hive debris. We melted these wax blocks two separate times and each time scraped the debris layer off the bottom of the cooled wax cake. The cake was then melted a third time, au bain-Marie and was then poured through an improvised filter: The filter was made from two pieces of strong wire formed into an oval at one end and a "hooked" handle on the other. The two pieces of wire were then tied together with thinner wire to keep them in position. These two wire loops were placed over eachother in such a way that the handles stuck out on either end of the oval loops. My bride selflessly donated a half-length pantyhose-stocking thingy. This, she sewed over the loop edges, making a guppy net-like filter. I won't tell you what she said it looked like. She pleaded with me not to show the guppy net filter doo-jig and wanted to take distance from the entire process, but it is part of the improvisational flavour of this thread--we could not have gotten such immaculately clean wax without it. It must be shown. Well, guppy net made... we began melting the wax in a muscle pan bought from the second hand shop in town. That slender yellow strip is all that is left from the thick cake of wax. When the wax is heated to a fluid state it is as dark as tea. However, if you look on the left side of the pan rim, you can see that when it cools, it becomes yellow again. Now then, once that last bit had melted, it was time to pour it into forms...through the guppy net, of course. Here you can see one batch in a one kilo ice cream container...still liquid. Quickly a foto then it was covered with a paper towel to keep out dust, bugs and so forth. That wax was hot, hot, hot. The thing is with this process is to not let it cool off too quickly, otherwise big cracks will form. The temps were in the 90's F, so we left it to cool off over several hours right there on the path. It was way too hot to work, so there was no chance of stubbing our toes on the container. We were cooling our heels over on the bench in the shade. Here they are almost finished: Almost two kilo's of clean and filtered wax for use in creams, salves, candles or woodworking... Inside the garden house that evening, one can only marvel at their beauty.
Love the look of those 2 last wax blocks. They're actually a thing of beauty. Never really realized the process of cooling took time to avoid cracking. Any initial projects lined up? And will you keep these blocks this size or will you cut them up and package them smaller?
This is the first time I've seen anyone do this. It's interesting to see the process and also to understand why bees wax has a high price. It's a big job but I would say it was worth the effort instead of just throwing it away.
Too right, ISLAND--they really are beautiful. Well, I do not have any wax projects lined-up. I shall sell these blocks. 2OF--I am glad that you found this subject interesting. It was indeed a bit of a job, but it is all part of the beekeeping hobby. I enjoyed it.
