Making beeswax
Beeswax is produced by honey bees metabolising honey in wax glands on their abdomen. Creating beeswax is a highly energy-intensive process: it takes around 10kg of nectar to make 1 kg of honey, around 8 kg of honey to produce 1 kg of wax. So, it takes approximately 80kg of nectar to make 1 kg of beeswax.
Honey bees create beeswax to form the comb they store nectar in, which they then dehydrate into honey.
Once the bees have dehydrated the honey to less than 18% water, they cap the cells with a thin layer of beeswax.
Harvesting beeswax
To extract the honey, the beekeeper must remove the layer of wax cappings. The frames of honey comb can then be placed in an extractor, ready for the honey to be extracted.
The 'decapping' process, combined with the reclamation of old brood comb (the comb the queen lays eggs in) produces a huge amount of waste wax.
Filtering beeswax
To remove impurities from the beeswax, I place the cappings and old comb into a large pot of water. I then heat the pot enough for the wax to slowly melt in the water, without overheating (around 65C). Once fully melted I poor the mix of water and beeswax through muslin (cheese cloth) into another bucket.
Generally the impurities consist of cocoons from brood comb and propolis.
High quality pure beeswax
As the beeswax and water mix cools, the denser water falls to the bottom of the bucket, leaving the beeswax to settle and cool above.
Beeswax expands when it's warm and contracts when it cools. This often leaves a big crack in the centre of the block, as the wax sticks to the inside of the bucket.
It's best to use a plastic bucket, as this allows the was to be removed in a single block without having to destroy the bucket.
This wax block weighs around 5kg. I break it down into small chunks with a hand axe, so I can fit it into the wax melter, ready to make candles.
