As the spring brings warmer, sunnier days, I realize it’s time to start melting batches of burr comb, honey cappings, and other wax scraps from frames that were pulled out of service last year. I don’t get much wax compared to other beekeepers, because I use a pin roller to uncap my honey during the summer harvest. I forego the wax in order to preserve comb for my bees. But I never waste what little wax I get, and turn the cleaned product into candles that can be used in my home or as gifts to family and friends. If you’re interested in how I turn the wax into candles, you can read about it here.
But before you can even think about making candles, you have to process the wax. If you’ve pulled burr comb out of a hive, you know that it can be filled with pollen, honey, and brood. These are not the ingredients of good candles or lip balm. To melt and clean my wax at the same time, I employ a homemade solar wax melter. Really it’s just an old cooler with a piece of plexiglass over it. The wax sits on a couple paper towels in an aluminum roasting pan you can get very cheaply at your grocery store—I use a nail to poke about ten 1/8” holes on one side of the pan. The pan is held at an angle, sloping downward, by a wooden platform I built out of scrap lumber. The holes should be on the low side of the pan, with a plastic food container placed beneath them to catch the dripping wax as it melts. To top it all off, I set a weight on the end of the plexiglass to help “seal” the air gap between it and the cooler.
This is the clean 10 oz block of wax I got out of the batch shown above
All told this setup probably cost me $30 ten years ago, and I’ve been using it to melt small batches of wax ever since. I can face it into the sun on a warm morning and by that evening I have a block of cleaned wax. The paper towels do a fantastic job filtering debris before it drips through the holes; you are likely to end up with a layer of honey below your dried wax, which can be fed back to the bees or spread on your toast. There’s very little involved in terms of labor with this setup, though I occasionally adjust the melter to face the sun if I happen to be walking past.
About 10 hours into a homemade beeswax taper candle
I managed to get about 10 ounces (283 grams) of wax processed from the batch shown in the top picture, which will be good for about three taper candles. I did this with a bare-bones set up, zero electricity, and very little time committed. The three candles that come from this effort will provide over 30 hours of light, aroma, and ambiance. On the next sunny day, I’ll do it again. And it’ll all pay off on a future winter night when there’s snow on the ground, the wind is howling, and my homemade beeswax candle is lighting the walls of my cabin.