Excess beeswax can be a pro or a con in the field of beekeeping. There are so many fabulous things to do with all natural, bee-made beeswax! However, if one isn’t that interested in beeswax projects, the excess can build up somewhere in the beeyard, inviting pests. And little chips of wax, as a beekeeper cleans off hives and frames can flick all over and get stuck on clothes and shoes, which eventually track into living spaces.
That being said, I thought it would be a great idea to collect the excess wax and save it for a project. So, I started collecting wax in jars and containers until I had a chance to use it. If the jar is kept in a warm place, moisture, honey, or bug parts within the wax can start to mold, or it at least starts to turn brownish. So keep it dry and cool.
When I looked at buying beeswax online, I saw pictures of all these beautiful yellow blocks or discs of pure, clean wax. My beeswax was an ugly, dirty mess with bee/bug parts, dirt particles, slivers of wood, and other sorts of junk. It looked nothing like the pictures on the internet. After a little research, I learned that cleaning up the wax is called “rendering wax.” It’s not hard to render wax, but it takes time and is pretty messy. Anything that touches wax basically becomes a “wax-rendering” tool and is very difficult to clean or ever use again for normal purposes in the kitchen. So, it’s advised to buy used equipment, like from a second-hand store, that will become dedicated wax-rendering tools.
A basic way to render wax is to slowly heat the impure wax in water in a pot or crockpot. Once the wax reaches the melting point, you pour it through cheesecloth into another dish or mold. The cheesecloth catches the impurities, and the wax in the dish hardens on the surface of the water as it cools down. If you have really old or dirty-looking wax, you repeat the process several times until you reach the point of smooth, purified, yellow wax. The last pour-off can be into silicone molds so that the final product is easy to store or in sizes that are manageable for your projects.
A key note is to slowly heat the wax just to the point of melting. Wax is highly flammable, and once it catches fire, it’s very difficult to put the fire out.
So I watched a video of a woman who rendered a small amount of wax on her stovetop. She had done this numerous times and made it look calm and easy. I didn’t have the same equipment that she did, but I had bought an old pot at Goodwill and covered my countertop, stove, and floor with cardboard. And so I followed her process step by step.
I supposed it wouldn’t take much more than an hour, but it was not to be. New projects always take me twice the time. So I spent a whole afternoon rendering one big lump of wax. The slow meltdown alone took about an hour, and I kept running to check it, unable to focus on other duties. Then I hadn’t chosen large enough recipient containers to catch all the wax and water coming through the cheesecloth. And I had to wait for it to cool enough before I went through the process a couple more times. In the end, I completed the process 4 times and got tools and equipment figured out. It worked! However, my final product still had a few imperfections, and wasn’t AS yellow as I wanted. But it was sufficient for my first time, and my up-coming beeswax projects.
I broke the rendered wax block into several pieces and stored it in a clean, dry jar in a cool, dark place, and it lasted a year and a half without molding or getting ruined in any way. What were my initial beeswax projects? Stay tuned for upcoming adventures in beeswax!
