Rendering wax....

So having fed the bees I found myself left with a whole washing up bowl of beeswax that I'd had to cut,chip and scrape off the top of the frames....

Up close it is possible to really appreciate how beautiful bees wax really is.

Not many people know it is white when the bees exude it from the wax glands in their abdomen.  The bees then strengthen it by adding  propolis, and thousands of "dirty" yellow pollen covered feet walking over it contribute to the gradual yellowing....

 

On these "fresh from the hive pieces that have barely been used the yellow cell rims are really clear.

But however beautiful it is, it isn't much good to me in this state,for a start I need the washing up bowl back!  So its time to get rendering.

In short, that's melting and filtering to clean up the wax.  I got this method out of a copy of Beecraft and it is really quite simple,as long as you can lay your hands on an old slow cooker.  A good friend rescued mine from a charity shop...

Pop a bowl in the bottom and part fill the cooking pot with boiling water, prop a seive over the bowl and line with nappy liners....

 

Start loading the wax,pop the lid on and adjust the temperature so the water is gently simmering...

 

Keep checking,and feed in more wax as it melts through, you can see the scum being held back by the nappy liners...

 

 

Pretty soon a pot of lovely, clean melted wax is accumulating below all the scum...

In fact it seemed to be dripping through thick and fast so I commandeered some old plastic take away boxes to allow it to cool down to one side so I could keep working my way through the whole bowl full...

 

Gradually the bottom of the bowl began to appear....

The cooling wax however had a strange, gritty, shiny granular coating to it....

Which puzzled me for a while.  Then I realised it was probably the remains of the crystalised honey from inside the honey comb.  There was nothing else for it - it needed to be washed away,  (as honey is super concentrated sugar solution then re-diluting it returns it to a wash away fluidity) and after rinsing a second filtering.....

produced a much cleaner scummy residue.....

and a much cleaner bowl of melted bees wax...

which slowly cooled and solidified to a beautiful creamy coloured block of wax....

Though I must confess I was surprised, and not a little disappointed, that a whole washing up bowl of wax came to a mere 10.2g!!!

Maybe I'll just hold it, and stroke it, and breath in its lovely smell occasionally!