# Foamy, grainy wax



## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

you will not get alot of wax from 5 frames. To put it into perspective, I melt 2 1/2 5 gallon pails of spun wax ( little honey left) and get close to 13-20 pounds, depending on the proplolis and pollen in the wax


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## rweakley (Jul 2, 2004)

forget cheese cloth, I think you would be better off using the paint filters from lowes or HD. As long as the wax and water and plenty hot, I hardly lose any this way. I use the big 5 gallon bucket filter first and then reheat and run through the 400 micron(I think) filter that is shaped like a cone. I tape it to a funnel so it doesn't collapse. I get quite a bit of wax from not too many frames of honey. (crush and strain)


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## Troy (Feb 9, 2006)

Both what rweakley said and honey shack are true, I can attest.

I recently extracted about 10 supers, so 90 frames of cappings wax. I got a 5 gal bucket about 2/3 full, from that I expect to get 3-5 lbs of useful wax.

So from your 5 frames, yeah I'd say you be lucky to fill a few lip gloss tubes.

Doing the math...... If I get 4 lbs of wax from 90 frames of cappings..... then you should expect to get 90/5 is 1/18th as much. 1/18th of 4 lbs is 1/18th of 64 oz is 
64/18 oz is 32/9 is almost 33/9 is 11/3 is almost 12/3 is almost 4 oz. 

Now if you lose half of that to the cheesecloth filter, then you have 2 oz usable wax.

Not much, but the math works.

Wax is far more rare a hive product than honey. Beeswax should sell for a lot more than it does.


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## beekeeper_sd (Oct 30, 2008)

How much beeswax do you intend to use in your lip balms? The recipe I use makes approx. 50 lip balms and only uses 3 oz. beeswax so, even if you only get a little wax, you should still be able to make some lip balms.


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