Too Much Honey/Water in My Beeswax?

[Musashi]

Hi all!

I am perplexed.

I have not been able to get my beeswax for candles to burn very well. I gave up and just have been storing wax from my crush and strain method. I simply crush the honeycomb, strain it and then melt the wax down using a stovetop double boiler.

I add water when I'm boiling the wax down, and when I'm done the water and wax have naturally separated. I dump the water out, and later remelt the wax and strain it through paint strainer bags.

I've always reasoned that if I'm going to add water anyway, I didn't see any point in washing the wax very well. Maybe my crushing method using a marble pestle is crushing too much honey in the wax or something, but my wax never burned all that well.

I finally got the gumption to make beeswax dipped pinecone firestarters.

I read somewhere that someone doing this had washed their wax (cappings) very well to get the honey out or something.

So, after my last honey pull, I crushed the honeycomb, as usual, but when I decided the honey was done, I washed the was this time very well...several times rinsing under cold water.

So I just made my first beeswax dipped pinecone firestarters. I made one batch with the old loosely washed wax and one batch with my new heavily rinsed wax. I wrapped both batches in medium size cotton wick.

Sure enough, the lightly rinsed batch didn't burn very well at all, and I sure wouldn't give them to anyone...one big whimper.

The heavily rinsed ones burned very very well.....a veritable bonfire which was what I was expecting.

I have two questions....

1. How is this possible?

2. Now that I have 50lbs of only lightly rinsed melted down wax sitting around for the past 2 years, how the heck do I get this stuff more "pure" so it will also burn for these and maybe candles?

I'm hoping to get my old not well rinsed wax to be useful to me now.

HELP! LOL

Thanks,
Musashi

[berkshire bee]

If you don't have anything really big to do it in, I would in small batches several times. You can wash the wax off each time after it hardens. Warm water will wash any honey residue off better than cold. After you have fairly clean wax, melt and filter a couple of times and you should be good. Candles need to be made with very clean wax to burn properly. Fire starters aren't as fussy. You can use slumgum for those if you aren't concerned with looks