# Best way to process beeswax



## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I do it two different ways. Capping I have a antique Kelly's wax melter that I use. Junk wax, like brood wax old frames wax. A galvanized wash tub on a fish fryer burner. They go by a lot of different names. Like for beer making or deep frying turkeys. Once the heavy amount of junk is worked off. It goes to the Kelly's wax melter. That way it gets more filtering. and made in smaller blocks. For you it a solar melter might work. If you have time. Do you have a bottling tank? You could use that with a ball valve.


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

I tried paper towels and I don't like that the wax is slow to filter. The easiest I found was double boiler with chees cloth.


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## hex0rz (Jan 14, 2014)

Steam rendering for me...

You won't get aromatic wax from steam rendering though.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

I get a deep cake pan. I build a wood frame to fit on top of its upper lip. Then I put a piece of #8 hardware cloth across the wood frame. I put 2 paper towels on top of the hardware cloth and then I pile my wax on top of that. Then I put it all in the oven and put it on 200 degrees F. It makes pristine wax. I can only do about 3 pounds at the time. Of course, you could build two and do 6 pounds at the time, etc.


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## orthoman (Feb 23, 2013)

Solar melter for me...during summer. Way less messy than boiling in water or making a mess in the kitchen as bees wax is almost impossible to clean out of the oven or stove.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

I use a solar wax melter in the summer as well. It saves me time and I get real nice wax. In the past I've just boiled all the wax and gunk in water and then let it cool. Pulled the wax off of the top, flipped it over, cut the junk off the bottom and repeated if necessary. You can usually do a final filter at that point.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

Just finished my new and improved solar melter. Got to used it a few times in the fall at 70-80 degrees. Where it is now it gets only about four hours of sun which was enough to melt several loads of wax before getting cold. 

Made it to fit a piece of scrap corrugated steel siding approximately 3' x 4'. Cut 2" x 6" lumber for the sided and left over plexiglas pieces in a frame for the top. Painted the wood dark brown with left over paint. Aluminum window screen on top of the steel siding. Maybe 2-3 hour to make. I spread the wax cappings/comb on the screen it holds all the slump gum. The wax melts and drips on the steel siding and runs down to the bottom. It can hold over a five gallon bucket of capping at a time. 

It takes very little effort/time to load, comes out nice and clean, may need to be filtered depending on what your using it's for. I have selected wax straight from the solar melter for lip balm. 

If it needs to filtered I cut an old sheet to fit inside a crock pot, fill it with wax and melt. When melted lift the sheet let the wax drain through it. Can use the sheet over and over again.


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## DeepCreek (Jan 23, 2015)

I use a turkey fryer. I built a solar wax melter but have never used it.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

FlowerPlanter said:


> Just finished my new and improved solar melter. Got to used it a few times in the fall at 70-80 degrees. Where it is now it gets only about four hours of sun which was enough to melt several loads of wax before getting cold.
> 
> Made it to fit a piece of scrap corrugated steel siding approximately 3' x 4'. Cut 2" x 6" lumber for the sided and left over plexiglas pieces in a frame for the top. Painted the wood dark brown with left over paint. Aluminum window screen on top of the steel siding. Maybe 2-3 hour to make. I spread the wax cappings/comb on the screen it holds all the slump gum. The wax melts and drips on the steel siding and runs down to the bottom. It can hold over a five gallon bucket of capping at a time.


Got pics?


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

nylon tricot fabric is great filter material. Buy on line. For the rest choose your safety level. Use no open flame.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Crock pots work good for very little funds 15.00 at walmart then pour thru cheescloth.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

snl said:


> Got pics?











Here's a picture before I framed the plexiglass.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

I use a solar wax melter which works great. If I have cappings or comb with a lot of honey in it I'll render it with water on a stove and pull the clean wax off the top. The crud at the bottom then goes into the solar wax melter. Actually I run the clean stuff through the solar wax melter too lol


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## Virgil (Jan 14, 2018)

I've got a stack of about ten boxes full of frames that need to be rendered. I put in a steam wax extractor, then take the brick and put in a solar wax extract. The steam machine renders it very quickly and the solar extractor bleaches the wax from the brown colour my old brood combs make. I then pour it into bricks and exchange for foundation.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

FlowerPlanter said:


> Here's a picture before I framed the plexiglass.


Tks!


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

I use an old ice chest with a piece of plexiglass over it. A brick holds the plexiglass down, another couple of bricks under one end tilt it towards the sun. A coffee filter clothespinned over the catch basin cleans the wax. In the morning I pull the previous days clean wax out, throw away the coffee filter full of slumgum, and refill. It is slow but it uses very little of my time, so I don't care. Every other method I've tried uses up a bigger slice of my time.


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## omnimirage (Aug 31, 2015)

So it seems best for me to build a solar wax melter. I found this design:

http://beesource.com/build-it-yourself/solar-wax-melter/

I'm wondering if people have any experience or ideas on how to go about building a melter cheaply and effectively. I'm not so good at construction so with that plan, the hinges, the glass panel and the metal pan I'm rather unsure about. I have some glass panels from old car windows that I could use, if only I could find some metal for it to then sit on top of and work out a way of sealing it.

JConnolly, did you line the ice chest with any metal? Did you cut out an opening at the bottom for the wax to drain out of?


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

JConnolly said:


> I use an old ice chest with a piece of plexiglass over it. A brick holds the plexiglass down, another couple of bricks under one end tilt it towards the sun. A coffee filter clothespinned over the catch basin cleans the wax. In the morning I pull the previous days clean wax out, throw away the coffee filter full of slumgum, and refill. It is slow but it uses very little of my time, so I don't care. Every other method I've tried uses up a bigger slice of my time.


Something you can put out and forget sounds great!


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

FlowerPlanter said:


> View attachment 37112
> 
> 
> Here's a picture before I framed the plexiglass.


Nice cat


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## gatsby174 (Jun 2, 2014)

I have in Inkbird controller in a refrigerator with a light bulb. I set the temp to 165 and use paper cone filters used for filtering grease. No fuss, no mess, no work.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

I have two inkbird controllers, I use one in a hotbox to keep honey at 93 F and I use the other in a not so hot box to keep my glue and paint at 60 F through the winter. Both are hooked to IR "bulbs". Not a bad idea for wax rendering. :thumbsup:


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

omnimirage,

I didn't line the old ice chest. It was an old chest that the lid got destroyed and I was just about to toss it in the trash when I thought it would make a solar melter. The chest is already insulated. I put the wax tray (old cookie sheet) inside it and since the whole chest is tilted to the sun the wax tray is tilted to. Under the bottom end of the wax tray I put a disposable tinfoil pan that I have secured a coffee filter to with clothespins. I used a couple of empty cans to set the wax tray on but you could easily screw a couple of boards to the inside to support whatever you needed. I've been meaning to spray paint the inside of it black, but never got around to it and it seems to work OK as is. The wax melts and drips through the coffee filter, then it cools overnight. In the morning I pop the wax slab out of the foil pan, re-flatten the foil, and repeat. It takes a few minutes, and then the wax processes while I'm at work. It's cheap. It's *******. It's not pretty. But I don't have to mind it during the day and if I don't have time the next morning its not a big deal, it'll still be there the next day, or the day after that. I put about 1/2" of water of in the foil pan. Any honey in the wax sinks through the melted wax and dissolves in the water while the wax floats on top.

Where I live I have clear blue skies most days of the year, so a solar melter works. Results may vary by where you live.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

Same here, lots of clear skies and solar gain during the summer. Solar works great. I stick bottles of beeswax/gum turp or beeswax/olive oil in the melter to make wax finishes. Easier and safer than using the stove. Just let them get hot then shake the snot out of them to mix


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

What to you use the wax finishes on? One of my newer hobbies is wood turning. I keep a stick of beeswax that I poured into a cardboard tube next to my lathe. After sanding I turn the lathe speed up and press the wax stick to the work piece. Friction heats it up and melts it into the wood and then a clean rag, friction, and a few seconds turns it into a high gloss food safe finish.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

I quit using olive oil as I had a 4 year old mixture go rancid. Now I mostly use food grade mineral oil with beeswax for use on butcher blocks and cutting boards. The beeswax and gum turpentine is used for everything and anything else  Well, I use a lot of shellac too but my main finishes are shellac and a beeswax finish. If youre making your own finishes you can add a small amount of carnauba wax to harden the mixture up and it polishes to a higher sheen. If you want a creamier wax for bowls I would try the beeswax and olive oil. It smells good. Im using FGMO now because it won't go rancid and I have a gallon of FGMO lol I love the natural finish beeswax gives :thumbsup:

I like to watch the Wyoming Wood Turner and a French Canadian guy on SG Art Woodturning. The Canadian guy does a lot of work with burls and makes some cool woodturned sinks. I really want a lathe but refuse to buy a crappy one. Nice bowl, Im jealous


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

FlowerPlanter said:


> View attachment 37112





Dan the bee guy said:


> Nice cat


Thanks, he oversees the wax melting process.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

rwurster said:


> I really want a lathe but refuse to buy a crappy one. Nice bowl, Im jealous


My wife bought me a Jet mini lathe a couple of years ago. Its quite a nice lathe but small, but that's OK, I'm not likely to be making any spindles or anything like that. That was my first bowl. Thanks for the tip on a carnauba and beeswax mixture, I'll have to give that a try.


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## Monashee (Apr 11, 2013)

Interesting. Do you have a PIC? I would love to see this... Thanks, Danial


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## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

My new wax melter is a small chest type deep freeze (not working, free for picking up). Drilled 2 holes in the bottom, bought 25 feet of pex tubing($7?), placed the coils in the bottom, ran the ends through the drilled holes. Hooked it up to the hot water supply unit for my cowan. I can liquefy honey, or turn up the temperature and melt wax. 

Mighta been simpler to have used a light bulb, but I already had the hot water unit, and pex is easy


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## estreya (Apr 20, 2014)

JConnolly, that bowl is absolutely exquisite. Well done!


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## Kcnc1 (Mar 31, 2017)

Flower Planter

With your solar wax melter: as the wax runs down the steel, what filters it? Do you direct it towards something at the bottom like a bucket or bowl?

I am coming into my second year and expect more wax and want to build something


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

The wax goes on window screen, it holds the slump gum. As the wax melts it drips through the screen on to the metal sheet then runs down leaving most of the debris behind.

Have a piece of freezer paper in the bottom for the wax to pool in. It comes out fairly clean, but still should be filtered, depending on what your using it for. I break the pieces and put them in a sheet in the crock pot when I am ready to use. 

I may add a collection trap to the bottom of the melter where I can set a container with a filter on top.


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## omnimirage (Aug 31, 2015)

I ended up building a solar wax melter out of an electric frying pan. 

https://imgur.com/a/f3Baq

It's been rather warm lately, temperature has been around 35-40 c / 95-104 f. It's been sitting out there for about 10 days and yet little has came out. Are they usually this slow? I have a lot of wax to process, and I've only got a few more months of heat left so at this rate I won't be able to process enough of it.

I haven't replaced the paper towel filter yet. It's gotten really uh, gunky and wax stained I guess. Could it be blocked? How often are you meant to replace these?

I figure I'll build something larger out of flexiglass and scrap metal, the frying pan was a temporary solution and experiment. It just seems that the really gunky, dark stuff in there won't break down. Is dark, brood filled capped harder to melt into wax? Does it just take a long time to melt down beeswax? Any suggestions as to how to proceed?


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## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

I wash the cappings really well in water. Then place in a very fine mesh bag. Hang that in oven and set at 160F. The wax drips into a water-filled pan. All nasty stuff like propolis and other gunk is left in the mesh bag. The water in the pan holds residual honey and other water soluble stuff. The resulting wax is very clean and doesn't need much scrapping at all. I did about 20 lbs of finished wax like that last year. I think it was 4 or 5 batches.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>It's been rather warm lately, temperature has been around 35-40 c / 95-104 f. It's been sitting out there for about 10 days and yet little has came out. Are they usually this slow?

No it should work a lot quicker and at a lower temp. Where I have it right now it only gets a few hours of sun, last fall as temps dropped into 70-80 deg F I could still melt a bucket of capping in one or two days.


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## ronsmith9809 (Jul 26, 2015)

sounds like there are several of us beekeepers that are also wood workers, I just finished a roll top desk and gave it to my son for christmas also many cutting boards and a doll cradle, I am interested in using my home rendered wax for finish. I use a solar wax melter that I built myself, I like solar extracted wax better then the mess I made in the kitchen.


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## JConnolly (Feb 21, 2015)

omnimirage

Maybe you need a hot box that is large enough that your filter and catch bin can be inside the hot box with the electric skillet. It takes a while for the wax to move through the filter, plus the filter needs enough surface area that it doesn't plug with slumgum right away. Between the small surface area you have there and the temperature differential that is between the inside and outside face of the filter you probably are plugging up. You are probably also loosing quite a bit of solar gain from the uninsulated sides of the skillet.

My ice-chest solar melter isn't huge, but it would easily render a skillet full of wax like you have in a day. 

If I were to use a skillet like that as the wax tray, I'd screw the skillet to the sides of an old ice chest, inside near the top at one end. I'd put a coffee filter over a disposable aluminum bread loaf pan with the filter held on by some spring clothespins. Id' load it with wax, tilt it to the sun, position the filter and loaf pan under the hole in the skillet, and then cover it with a piece of plexiglass or glass. The entire box will get hot with the entire skillet, filter, and catch bin all inside the insulated area.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

With the quantity that you've I started using a 16 gallon double boiler. Dump all the cappings in an old pillow case you can buy from a thrift store for $1. Put a few cups of water in with the cappings and heat it up to 180-190. Slowly lift the pillow case out. I have a rope tied to the top of the pillow case and I lift it 3-4 inches per few hours via a ladder over the double boiler. It gives time for the wax to filter out of the pillow case. Once it's out (it can take a day) turn off the double boiler and let it cool overnight. I use the pillow case and slum gum to start large brush fires but throw it away otherwise. Once the double boiler and wax is cool pour off the water/honey and feed it back to the bees. Pull you puck out (30-40 lbs) and clean out the bottom from and slum gum etc and. Once it's clean put the puck back in and get it back up to temp. Pour the wax into bread pans (be sure to use a ball valve). The last time I did this it took me 5 days from start to finish to handle the wax off of 50 hives. I do use a solar wax melter for small quantities but it's simply not efficient for large amounts of wax, especially if the weather won't cooperate.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

There's a point where a person just has to go to some kind of hot water rendering system. The wax comes off really nice and clean from the top.

D Coates, one thing I've found slum gum does exceedingly well - is burn lol


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Get a stainless steel tank and do it right. How to heat the tank is the tricky part, but a water jacket works.

Crazy Roland


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## SWM (Nov 17, 2009)

So what do you guys think about the Maxant Model 3900WPT for processing cappings wax?
http://www.maxantindustries.com/wax.html


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## Planner (Apr 3, 2016)

I don't know a thing about electricity. Could you explain how you wire the light bulb holder to the Inkbird?
Thank


gatsby174 said:


> I have in Inkbird controller in a refrigerator with a light bulb. I set the temp to 165 and use paper cone filters used for filtering grease. No fuss, no mess, no work.


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## woodedareas (Sep 10, 2010)

SWM said:


> So what do you guys think about the Maxant Model 3900WPT for processing cappings wax?
> http://www.maxantindustries.com/wax.html


I like the 3900and will be purchasing one.


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