Melting wax in 55 gallon drums.

[Makin' Honey]

I am wanting ideas and experience melting wax cappings in 55 gallon drums. I shovel my cappings out of my uncapper into a drum after they have drained overnight. I melt the cappings by putting the drum into a hot water bath. The honey is black when the wax is melted and I throw it out. I would like to try something new to save the honey. Any good ideas?

[jim lyon]

Nope, if you figure that one out you can get rich. Spreading it out for the bees to rob is about the best way to salvage it. There is a market for melter honey if it isnt too black or too thin. Be careful thinning it and feeding it back, in the fall they need to have time to properly cure it and in the spring you run a danger of the dark honey getting blended with your new crop honey.

[Ted Kretschmann]

We catch the capping from the spinner directly into the drum. The cappings are then placed on the loading dock on a stand. A burner from a fish cooker is placed under the drum. The drum is filled up with water untill the cappings have about two inches of water on top of them. The propane burner is lit and the wax is thus melted. The wax is ladled off into a concrete mixing mold-2.00 dollars-that can be had at any home depot. Forms about a 45 pound cake. When ten drums worth of wax has been melted the slum cake's bottoms are scapped and then melted a second time. There is not a third time, as there is not much to recover. The water from the first melt has some honey in it. It is scoarched and not fit for beefeed. BUT we have found a use for it. Some of it we strain and place it in a garden sprayer. IT IS VERY GOOD WEED CONTROL IN A BEEYARD. Any weed that you hit with this stuff dies. I think that the plants can not stand being coated in a sugary mess. We discovered this because we would pour out the drums to recover the slum cakes in the grass and the grass died and did not return. So it makes a good biodegradeable herbicide. Heck, I thought about bottling the stuff and selling it to the "green" minded people. Good Luck, I hope this helps. TED

[odfrank]

I have been selling black solar honey to a guy who feeds it to his chickens and several others who use it for brewing. Send your name to some brew clubs. Earthquake here while am typing.

[beesohappy]

Maybe you can make a wire basket of sorts and let gravity push the wax out of the capping and then render the wax. If not I've heard that baking with the dark honey is great. Good Luck!

[Roland]

Or you could ferment the water from below the melted cappings. But DO NOT attempt to separate the alcohol from the water with a boiler and a run of copper tube in cold water. The production of "bio-fuel" is frowned on by certain gov't factions.

Crazy Roland

P.S. I understand old VW's will run on the stuff.

[beesohappy]

Oops! I meant honey not wax, but I'm sure you knew what I meant.

[chillardbee]

I uncap into a super that has a screened (#8 screen) on the bottom that sits on my sump to drain. It usually has enough room for a full days extracting and I let it drain over night. the warmth of the sump helps quit a bit too. In the morning before I start uncapping again, I'll take the cappings out, they are quit dry at that point and most of the honey has drained. I put the cappings in a pial and add a little water to ferment what little honey there is off. I'll drain that off before rendering the wax.

[DixieLee]

In my few years experience, and maybe this won't work for someone with many more hives than I have, but I allow the cappings to drain for a few days instead of just one night. I have two tubs I use for catching the cappings. I have the tubs that are about three feet long by about two feet at about two feet deep. I rigged some screen about half way up from the bottom of the tub and have a board to rest the frames on while I cut off the cappings. If it is a nice sunny and warm day I'll put the tub with the cappings out in the sun and let it stay there until the sun starts to go down then bring it back into the honey extracting room overnight. I'll do that for a couple of days then clean the cappings in clean water and allow them to air dry then store them in another larger tub until I have time to render the wax. The honey in the cappings catcher is nice and "clean" and can be bottled for use or sale. I have found that if I let the cappings set in the sun for more than two or three days the honey can start to darken if it is very warm. And of course, in Florida and Texas the summer temps can be brutal at times. I have two capping catcher tubs so I have one draining and one I am using. I just rotate them out as needed. It works quite well for me. But I am far from being a big operation. I hope this helps. Have a great day! And good-luck!

[Tom G. Laury]

I built an oven for rendering cappings. It holds four barrels. They stand on a rack over a stainless tank. The tank has a "basket" that slips on top. (Between the tank & the barrel rack). The basket is lined with burlap. The oven is heated electrically, with thermostatic control and a circulating fan. After approximately 24 hours the material is melted and ready for drawing off. First comes honey, then the wax. The slum comes out in the burlap basket. I have gotten a light amber honey from this set up many times. Most of the darkening of the honey comes from a reaction with iron from poor quality drums. If you will use drums with a fairly intact teflon lining your melter honey will be higher grade.

[Ian]

>>IT IS VERY GOOD WEED CONTROL IN A BEEYARD

Ya, dump out some old syrup and it will do the same. In your post it sounded like you didn't soak the ground , just the foliage.
I think when it soaks the ground , the sugar ferments and the acids kill off the roots. It will keep a spot bare for quite some time. Who needs round up
But it also smells like a rotting rodent!