everyone who owns bees eventually gets round to extracting the honey from the
colonies when you extract the honey from the colonies & the two-thirds of the
frames capped and when you cut the wax off the cap you get pure beeswax and
that pure beeswax is called wax cappings and it is mixed with honey there are
several methods of refining beeswax so what I'm going to talk about today is
the most simplest one and very appropriate for beekeepers with small
numbers of hives if you've got small numbers of hives and a microwave all you
need is some ice cream containers and a straining cloth and a microwave you get
the cappings mixed with honey you transfer them into an ice cream container that's
microwave friendly you put the ice cream container in the microwave and set the
microwave for about 15 minutes now the time is going to vary depending on the
strength of the microwave and the amount of honey and wax and you put in
the ice cream container the aim is to have the whole lot liquid and you can check that
by opening the microwave and checking that the whole lot's liquid once the
whole lot is liquid the wax and honey are mixed up together you then need
another ice cream container like this one and you put a strainer on the top of
the ice cream container and with the melting wax and honey but be careful you
pour that through this straining cloth by pouring it through the straining
cloth only honey and pure beeswax ends up in the container you need to let that
set and it takes a while for beeswax to set and to cool down and you will end up
with pure beeswax that's been strained on the top and honey on the bottom so a
bit like milk and cream melted wax and honey separate out with the wax going to
the top in the straining cloth you will find
cocoons of bees that are dark in color and they're regarded as impurities in
beeswax once the whole block is set you end up with pure beeswax that you can
trade in for comb Foundation beekeeping supply places buy beeswax and it's
quite a valuable byproduct of the hive it melts at 62 degrees Celsius the honey
underneath is darker than normal but still quite edible and perfectly cleaned
so you can take the block out get the honey off it and put the honey into you
know a jar and that's quite edible and the block of wax is solid that you can
trade in and sell if you just melt the whole lot up and don't use a strainer
you end up with a block of beeswax like that and it's got the impurities of the
cocoons in the beeswax we turn this block over which is cracked you'll see
on the bottom it's quite black and dark so that's called slum gum we look at an
angle like that we see the wax on the top in the slum gum and impurities on
the bottom the honey will still be perfectly clean if you do that and just
melt it up and leave it there but to sell beeswax it needs to be strained and
clean and that's what happens and we'll see that block in a little while once we
finish melting the wax down and you get a pure block of beeswax... by all
means do this because wax is valuable and it's easy to sell to beekeeping
suppliers to buy more beekeeping equipment or comb Foundation or you can
use it yourself to make candles to make lips salv to
make hand creams there's many formulas that you can get you know to make your
own products from beeswax some people sell beeswax on eBay and get quite a
high price for it so we're never got quite a hot mass in this container of
beeswax and honey and what we call slum gum which is
residues from the cells where the cocoons were where the brood combs were
even though you extracted... there's been brood in some of the honey
combs as well so just quite hot so you have to be careful that the ice cream
container is not that hot so now I've got it very carefully pour this into the
straining cloth for it to run through so if you just do it steadily that's the
best way to do it so the cloth doesn't block up too much
so the honey in the wax is all now completely mixed but when it cools then
we'll have pure honey on the bottom and pure beeswax on the top that will be a
marketable block of wax for you to sell or to make products from
so there just need to wait for that to run through the strainer
so once you've only got slum gum in the strainer you can then carefully remove
the strainer and that will reveal you know the clean block of beeswax
so that's a block of clean wax
that'll set fairly soon this is a block I prepared yesterday and you'll notice
that the wax is quite yellow quite clean and it's cracked because it cooled down
fairly quickly and you'll notice some of the honey has come through the cracks
and that's the colour of the honey still quite edible but darker than normal
because it's been overheated okay so this is unfortunately cracked but it'll
just demonstrate you know the colour of the honey and how clean the wax is on
the top and also on the bottom
so the idea now is to strain that honey off it and you'll end up with a block of
clean pure beeswax