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Q: Best way to melt wax w/o a solar wax melter

5K views 8 replies 8 participants last post by  shannonswyatt 
#1 ·
I've culled a bunch of old frames, as well as collected a bunch of wax cappings. I want to melt it all down and strain it to use as beeswax. But I do not have a solar wax melter.

What is an easy way for me to do this? Would I do something in my oven?

Thanks,

Steven
 
#3 ·
put wax in a deep pot and put water in with wax, put on stove not real high, until wax is all melted. shut off heat and let set and cool, wax will be on the top in a fairly clean cake, and gunk will be in the bottom of pot, turn upside down pour out water and you may have to scrape a little sediment off the bottom of the wax, but it will be clean. I would do cappings and old comb in different batches, as it will be a diff. color of wax.
 
#4 ·
Go to a thrift store and get an old crock pot, or something like a crock pot that can get water to boiling. Also do a search on youtube for fatbeeman and how he renders wax. It works. You may want to do your capping seperate from comb as it will probably be clean and very light as wax, whereas other comb will make darker wax.
 
#5 ·
I bought a plastic container, painted the inside black and wrapped the outside in insulation. Inside I mounted a baking pan large enough to hold deep frames with screen wire on the inside. The pan slopes down and I cut a slot for wax to drip into a plastic pan with a little water in the bottom. I found 2 old windows to cover it. It worked great when it was hot and it was cheap to make.
 
#6 ·
I agree with all the other replies.
Just want to add if the the old comb was used extensively for brood if may not be worth doing any thing with. According to one good book I read, brood comb only contains 15-35% wax. From my experience , I would agree. Just chuck old black brood comb out. Cappings are fine.

If using a crock pot, make sure you put water in it and preferably do it outside..

Geoff
 
#9 ·
I did the melt in water method. Worked well. I did use a strainer (now part of the permanent wax rendering kit!) to get out the floating muck and I melted it twice, changing the water in between. Supposedly if you are rendering cappings the water from the first melting can be feed back to the bees as it will have a high honey content . It takes a long time to cool. Once the wax starts to harden on the top it insulates the thing. If you do render old black comb it will have a lot of cocoons in it and it will look nasty when in the water, and it will be darker wax.

Whatever you use will be ruined except for further wax processing. Next time I'm going to setup a sheet of plywood to do the work on. I did it in the kitchen and only had a few drops here and there, but that stuff is hard to get up. Putting down paper towels doesn't help as the wax seems to go right through it. You have been warned.
 
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