Make your own Beeswax Candles Part 1 Rendering the beeswax

Part 1 of this project is for beekeepers. If you want to make your own beeswax candles, but are not a beekeeper Part 2 is for you!

I am positive that there are beekeepers out there doing a lot better job of this than me, but hey, this was my first time rendering beeswax, and my final product turned out the way I wanted, so I say I did pretty good. Also, when you are in the kitchen with a pot full of hot wax, your cleanliness and professionalism goes completely out the window. I did a lot of research on this before attempting, but when there is that much wax sticking to all of your spoons, ladles, strainers, and counters, you go into crisis mode and just do what's best at the time! haha

Anywho, after taking a couple years off, I am finally getting back into beekeeping for the 2013 season. I am just so excited! This means I had to clean out all my old hive boxes and frames, to prepare them for next year. I collected all of my beeswax and put it all in an absolutely huge (heavy!) canning pot.

Rendering beeswax is a very long, sticky, messy process. But the outcome is very satisfying. Being able to give people candles that you made yourself is pretty impressive. 

The wax that came out of these hives is pretty nasty compared to what you would get out of a fresh hive, these boxes have been sitting around for a while so the wax is pretty dark, and not as pretty yellow as it will be next year (but it is still useful!!)

I put all my nasty wax in the canning pot, added water until the wax was covered, plus about an inch. The wax will float in the water so you have to watch it to see where the water is. 

Like I said yuck! It looks pretty gross, and in my case didn't smell great because it is old beeswax. If this was fresh wax it would look much more yummy and smell that way too. :) Next year I will post my candle making with my fresh hives and it will be beautiful! I promise!

Cook your wax over medium-low heat, I've heard a lot of beekeepers say if you turn it up too high it becomes very flammable and dangerous, but I luckily didn't encounter anything like that. As long as you keep your temperature low you should be fine. It took about 45 minutes to melt completely. You want your wax to melt to the point that it all just looks like the water, completely liquid.

The ideal situation would be to use cheesecloth, to strain your wax, but my local Hobby Lobby was being lame and didn't have any cheesecloth, all they had was tack cloth, which I absolutely do not recommend. Tack cloth is cheesecloth infused with beeswax, so I was straining beeswax through beeswax. You can imagine the level of stickiness in my home. 

 I duct taped my tack cloth to some small shoe box sized storage boxes. 

This unfortunately is where I went into crisis mode with the stickiness overload and didn't get any pictures. But I ladled my melted beeswax onto the cheesecloth (tack cloth) and any dirt, wood chips, debris, etc collects on the cloth and all that drips into the box is the water and wax. 

Here is what it looks like strained. You just let that set up. I let them sit overnight. You have to let the water separate from the beeswax. In the morning you can take out the wax and dump the water. 

It will start separating fairly quickly, but it is good to leave it overnight so you get as much beeswax at the top as you can, so you can make a lot of candles!! 

Here is the wax floating to the top. 

The next day I just took the blocks of wax out of the water and cleaned them up. There will be some dirt and propolis on the bottom of the wax, I just scraped it off with a steak knife. You can sell if it if you would like, I didn't have enough to worry about though. 

I then melted all the wax in my crock pot, and now you are ready for Part 2! Now comes the fun part!!