How To Filter and Melt Beeswax

Through a lot of trial and error I think I have finally made a homemade deodorant recipe that actually works, however yesterday when I was doing a little research on filling deodorant containers I learned that some folks were putting a little beeswax into their recipes to keep the deodorant from melting in hotter temperatures. Genius. I wondered what our hot summers would do to my homemade concoction and assumed I'd have to keep my deodorant in the fridge.

I looked online for beeswax and then remembered that I actually had some of my own sitting in my pantry waiting to be cleaned up. This was what was left from last year's honey harvest. The only problem? I did not know HOW to do it ... but of course youtube did.

I watched 3 short videos (at the end of this post), all with different methods of filtering the wax. All of them seem very doable, however the slow-cooker method seemed the best option for my needs. I am glad I watched all videos though because each one had a little bit more information and all complimented each other.

Regardless of the method used, the left-over honey must first be rinsed off the wax. To do this, I put my whole blob of goo into a 5 gallon bucket to be sure I had PLENTY of room to swish it around. After much swishing and breaking up any chunks, I drained it into another 5 gallon bucket, catching the wax bits (and other stuff) into a fine, plastic mesh colander. The blob was no longer as gooey, however I gave it one more good swish and rinse in the bucket and strained it. The rinsing water went out on the lawn each time so as to prevent too much wax bits from going into my kitchen drain.

I then followed the instructions given on the video using the slow-cooker method; I'll post that video first. It worked beautifully and was very easy to do. The hardest part? Cleaning up. I decided the cost (a few dollars maybe?) of the net strainer I used in the slow cooker was well worth getting the 'free' wax ... so instead of spending my time and energy cleaning it off the next day I just threw it away. It took some effort to scrape the left-over bits off my crock-pot, so next time I was thinking of having a pot exclusively for wax melting. We'll see. All in all, this was a very easy project and took minimal effort. Just right for me.

And here's the fruit of my labour ... more than I expected for what little bit I started with (6 small frames with a plastic foundation):

~6oz of beeswax - it smells really yummy!

I really should have taken a 'before' photo ... it was so nasty looking!! Really dark brown and even almost black in places. I was pleased to see my wax turned out just as nice-looking as the wax in the videos. Now I'll have to see how it does in my homemade deodorant. I'll share that information some other time.

Oh yes, and as a final thought, I could melt this wax down and dip wicks in it for homemade beeswax candles ... but maybe some other time? Candles are not a big need for us right now, but it's nice to know I can make them if I want/need to!

Slow-Cooker Method

Stove-top Method (this one does not seem as practical as the other two, but it works!)

Solar Oven Method (if I had a solar oven or a smaller green house I would like to try this method as it looks the easiest. Maybe some day.)

Hand-Extracting Honey

Our bees produced enough honey this past year to hopefully feed them through the winter. This was our first year with them so we expected it to go this way :)

However ... a woman at the bee meeting asked if we would like to extract some honey for her and said she would give us half. I got on youtube and saw a video right away about using two five-gallon buckets and a five-gallon bucket paint strainer -- it looked super easy, so we went to Lowe's immediately and got a few new buckets (didn't feel like cleaning out nasty old ones) and the strainer (found in the paint department; they also have a 1-gallon size, which seems like it would be great for cheese making).

At home we took the cleanest old bucket we had and sawed off the bottom half of it. The half-bucket sits quite nicely right on top of the whole bucket, and this offers elevation for the strainer so it does not get in to the honey that's dripping down. It got a little heavy, so we used binder clips and clothes pins to help it stay in place.

(the pictures were not very good ... sorry! I might look and see later if Brianna has better ones on her camera as all of these are from my phone)

So, the process was:

1) Scrape the caps off the comb. Our handy "Back to Basics" book suggested using two large knives kept warm in a bowl of hot water. Wipe the knife dry before using it!

Corban scraping the caps off with a warm knife.

2) Scrape the honey and comb off the frame. We have a baker's scraper that worked perfectly for this!!! Also, it really helped that 5 of the 6 frames had a plastic base. The other one was not as easy to scrape off.

Baker's scraper :)

3) Squish the honey out of the comb as best as you can. The guy in the video I watched did this by hand. We actually forgot to do this step so we are going to do it later with what is left after straining it.

4) Pour the scraped and squished honey and comb into the prepared net/strainer.

Binder clips and clothes pin help hold it in place.

  5) Pour the strained honey in to jars.

YUM!

We are so thankful for the free honey!! This was pretty easy work ... and we learned a lot too. In all we got a gallon or so of honey off of 6 smaller frames; the woman only wanted a small jar but we gave her a quart.

Now we are hoping our bees produce enough honey for us to have some next year. We lost one hive because of pesticides :( :( but the other one seems really strong. We are hoping they make it through the winter and all the dangers it can bring.