How I process my Beeswax

One of the good things about hot July weather is that it gives me a chance to process the wax I've collected over the last year. I've tried a few things and I've ended up with the following:


That's an old window (and window casing) sitting on the cement behind my house. Under that I have an old flexible cake pan with some water in it and on top of that I have some #4 hardware cloth and some additional screen when I want clean wax. Sometimes I just use the screen to melt the wax down into a smaller chunk with plans to actually do a good cleaning job with a later melt.


The window has double-paned glass so it is able to melt wax even when the temperature is in the 40s but it goes so much quicker when the temperatures get high. The end result is a smoother and more uniform piece of wax too. The wax melts leaving behind the non-wax parts of the comb (pollen, brood cells, bee legs, etc) and drips into the water in the cake pan. Things that are heavier than water (dirt) and the leftover honey ends up in the water. That leaves the wax to float on top and make a nice chunk to use later with any impurities on the bottom or top layer of the wax. These can be scraped off easily and the removed wax can be reprocessed later to reclaim it.