How to properly melt beeswax cappings

My first year beekeeping I had a bit of wax and I melted it to make candles using a crock pot.

I did that for the first few years and then found I got so busy I started stockpiling the cappings to deal with "later".

You know, when I get a round-to-it.

I wanted to bump up our sales to help pay the beekeeping bills.

Ultimately I don't care if I make money since it's a hobby, but I'd like it to at least pay for itself.

I'm going through the bags and pails of saved cappings wax.  Some are bee licked dry and others are sticky.

I started researching the best ways to process beeswax and that lead me to some interesting information.  Take a look at my candles in the photo below.

Notice the colour difference between left and right?  The left side is the colour I was most familiar with.  But then I learned that the wax was actually camel coloured because it had been overheated when melting.

I had followed the directions on some U-Tube videos where beeswax was put in either a double boiler or into water in a pot and was then boiled on high heat.  Much too hot for the delicate wax I learned.

Overheating cappings wax not only destroys its colour but it greatly lessens the beautiful aroma as well.  Here's an excellent video on a one step slow melt oven process.  I like this for the safety as it's enclosed while melting for long periods of time in an oven.

When I slowly melted cappings in the oven on the lowest setting and leaving it for
hours and hours the wax that melted was bright yellow and also very clean and smelled amazing.

I wanted to know why the wax was bright yellow.  And that's what lead to further research where I learned I had been overheating my wax.

[Oven melt pan with wax, honey and a bit of water.  I use the darkened honey in mead making or baking.  I prefer to have the bees lick the wet cappings but don't always get that done.]

I now melt cappings either in the oven or a double boiler, but always with very low temperature over many hours.  And the wax is gorgeous and the colour is usually yellow/orange.

But here's what's happening now when it comes to selling. Customers are so used to the camel coloured beeswax that they think the yellow/orange wax isn't right or has been altered in some way and many seemed to prefer the camel coloured wax.

[My double boiler - water in the bottom and wax in the top]

A customer at the craft sale changed her mind on the lighter colour after she smelled the candles.  The camel colour had only some smell and the yellow/orange had a lot.  I can see some customer education is in order.  Maybe some beekeeper education too.

What are your experiences with melting wax?

Another important thing to do is to filter the wax.  I'll provide more info on how to do that soon.

Beeswax - A Tale of Trial and Error

Candle making.

I've been figuring this one out a bit at a time.  I get a piece of advice here or there and then of course there's my tried and true:

Trial and Error

I had some nice and dry cappings from a few seasons ago.  That season I'd had the bees lick them dry.

When these were melted in the crock pot everything went great - the wax was clean with very little debris.

I scooped out the melted wax near the surface and then poured it through a piece of silk over my glass pitcher.  Fine particles were trapped.  From there I poured straight into my candle mold.  No problem.

I got a little over excited because I was ripping through some containers of wax that had been sitting around waiting for a long time to be processed.

 

With the change in our weather back to cold I decided to use my free time to paint some wooden ware and finally process all this wax.

 

I'd made a few candles and they'd cooled down so I was able to remove them and free up the molds.

Then I found another batch of combs.  These were heavier and clumpier.  It should have been a warning but I was too busy being productive and proud to pay attention.  Into the crock pot they went

I poured the molds.  Hours later I returned to empty them only to find the top 2" was wax and the bottom half was a thick cooked honey.

Then I remembered that the dross and honey go to the bottom of the pot and the wax floats to the top.  So I switched to a two stage process.

[Photo - glass pitcher with debris caught on silk.

The clean wax pours from the spout onto the second silk which is clamped on my mold container.]



Stage one to melt the wax.  Then I poured it through a piece of silk into a glass pitcher.  The crud was caught on the silk.

Next I poured the cleaner wax through another piece of silk camped over a plastic container.  This container will be my brick mold.

The bricks can be stored until needed and the size is just right to fit into the crock pot.

Another way to do this would be to heat the wax up, letting it separate and then just let it cool so the wax will harden on the top.

I was left with some dark sweet syrup - caramelized honey which could be used in cooking.  It was hot so I set it aside to cool.  A layer of wax cooled on the surface, reminding me of beef fat and gravy.

By the way remember to never feed caramelized honey to bees because it will kill them.