Rendering Beeswax Cappings

How to wash beeswax cappings.

Rendering beeswax cappings.

The cakes of wax from this first straining. How to clean and render beeswax every beekeeper seems to have a different method for rendering wax. At this point the beeswax is still sticky and some beekeepers will choose to wash them. Rinse your leftover wax cappings.

I did not want that in the wax i was going to be using so it needed to be removed. What are the steps for rendering beeswax. Beeswax protects the skin while allowing it to breath. It is as simple as placing your cappings in a bucket and adding water.

Cappings from your honey extraction. Let the wax soak for at least one hour. When you spin honey there is always leftover wax and there s always a bit of honey left in that wax. We use it to make candles and reusable food wraps.

I learned this the hard way. When rendering beeswax from brood comb i highly suggest doubling or even tripling the layers of cheesecloth. The beeswax was full of bits of honey and brown hard cappings. You will want to rinse at least three times.

Then i broke it up into pieces and wrapped it up inside two layers of fine cheesecloth and reprocessed it. There is also a good amount of honey still in there which. Because of its anti inflammatory antibacterial and antiviral benefits we also use it in many of our soaps and skin care products. For cleaning the wax from only one or two hives i use a very simplified process that can be completed in about an hour.

The pot should be at least 2 inches higher than the wax cappings you are rendering. Once i discovered our beeswax had some small particles of crud in it i had to wait for it to solidify. But i had to clean it up a bit. Rendering beeswax is the first step in the purification process.

First take the wax cappings from the frames and place them in a heavy pot. Put all cappings in a large bowl and fill with water. While honey is very precious beeswax cappings are even more so. Only use cool clear water to clean your beeswax cappings.

Beeswax has a thousand and one cosmetic and domestic uses but unless a good price can be assured the most fundamental use for the beeswax crop is as new foundation. Rendering beeswax ok so the idea here is to end up with pure yellow beeswax by removing all of the impurities in the raw comb and honeycomb cappings from the extraction.