Processing beeswax?

[Birdie Wife]

Hope you can help with this - not sure where to put this question so I put it here because I mostly use beeswax in lip balms.

I try to use locally sourced ingredients wherever possible. A bee-keeper friend of mine sent me some wax cappings from his hive and I wondered if there was a process for turning it into beeswax? There's about a pound (500g) of it. It looks a bit like small dusty particles and I'm used to getting my beeswax in nice clean pellets. I'm not expecting to make pellets with it but I'd like to use it for something if there's a relatively easy way to do it. Any advice?

 

[reinbeau]

Ok, here's the deal. Honeycomb needs to be rendered into beeswax. There is debris in there that has to come out, honey, propolis, etc. I do it this way:

First a caution. Beeswax is extremely flammable. Never melt wax over direct heat or flame. Get a double boiler you're never going to want to use again. Put the honeycomb in the top with a little bit of water. Bring the water in the bottom to a simmer, make sure it isn't touching the bottom of the upper chamber where the comb and water is. Let the wax/water combo melt - while it's melting, prepare your 'mold'.

What I use is a waxed orange juice carton. Cut the top off. Get some cheesecloth, and some binder clips. Clip the cheesecloth to the top four sides of the carton, letting the center droop into the carton.

Once your wax/water is melted, carefully (I can't emphasize this enough. Again, beeswax is highly flammable, and if you get it on you, it burns. Badly. Be careful to not spill it) pour the wax/water through the cheesecloth into the carton. You're done! Almost

Once the wax in the carton has cooled, you'll have layers in there. The top is the wax. Below is any slumgum that got through the cheesecloth, and below that is the water. Tear the carton away over the sink, pull your beautiful block out. If you see a lot of stuff stuck to the bottom, don't worry, you can either cut/scrape it away or you can remelt it and restrain it through finer cheesecloth, or even an old cotton t-shirt would work.

I shave off the block what I want to use. I have a dedicated little crockpot that I melt beeswax in to use in soap. I never clean that out, nor do I do much to the double boiler other than to scrape out any yuck. Seriously, do not use anything you want to use for something else - it won't come clean! To make it more 'pellet' like you can pour it thinly onto smooth baking pans and then scrape it up into pieces - but really, shaving off what you want works just as well.

I hope I answered your question, ask anything else you might want to ask!http://www.soapmakingforum.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/