Friday, August 19, 2016

Wax On, Wax Off - Candle Making Day!

Hey everyone! I'm terribly sorry it's been so long since I last updated the blog. The bees are still working on their honey so I have no hive updates to report.  We have a game plan in place for September 10th to remove the honey super once drained and get our hives ready for Winter. I'll be documenting that for you once that begins. 

However, today is a much different kind of blog post. Today it's all about the wax from the hive!


So these were the wax cappings we got from the honey extraction process. I put the wax cappings in an old crock pot to melt. I added about two inches of water to the wax. The wax melted with the water as a HOT liquid. BEE CAREFUL! When that happens, I take a 2nd crock pot (but you can use a small bucket or bread pan, etc) and pour that liquid through an old T-shirt to filter out all of the debris that is mixed in the wax. I use a rubberband to secure the T-shirt to the 2nd crock pot. T-shirts work SO much better than cheese cloth as the fibers are tinier and catch more gunk.

Once the wax has begun to harden, the water will separate from it and will allow any remaining debris to fall to the bottom.  This is a clean wax cake that I took out of the crock pot after the wax hardened. How cool is that?


So what do I do with this cake of wax? Well, make candles of course! This is where the fun begins!





Alright, so the wax has melted and is totally clean and pure beeswax. I poured it into the bar molds and it looked like this:


You can see it's still liquified but it doesn't take too long to harden. The bars took about an hour or so before they were completely hardened. I had a lot of wax left so I took out a candle mold. It was exciting because I'd never done that before. Ok, I'd not done any of this, so it was a fun-filled day!


Here's what the bars look like once they are out of their molds. They say BEESWAX! How cool is that? Yes, I think it's all cool at this point.


Here was my work station after removing the first round of bars, pouring the 2nd round (you can see the wax in the molds is changing colors as it cools. The center mold is my candle mold, but that took several hours to cool before I could remove it. I just left it overnight so it would be ready in the morning. It was extremely difficult not to mess with it while it dried, but I refrained.


It was SO worth it! Look how cute this candle is! It's an old skep beehive with tiny bees on the side. Makes you think of Winnie the Pooh doesn't it? I have some vanilla scent but I didn't add it this time since I wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing. Next time I'll definitely add some scent. It's 3" x 2.5" and simply adorable!

The molds have been a big success. I think we're going to try lip balm too as beeswax lip balm is a popular thing. I saw a stick for $3.50 in a local store. Would you pay $3.50 for a stick of lip balm? Please let me know in the comments section. I saw my beehive candle at an online shop for $8 plus $8 shipping. I won't be charging that. I think $6 is much more appropriate. Let me know if you're interested. Like I said, I'll have regular and vanilla scented skep candles. Beeswax candles burn clean and for a little trivia, churches mostly use beeswax candles for that very reason.

This was such a fun endeavor and I'm happy to report that I have a bunch of wax ready to go. I have a feeling my weekend is going to be very busy. You know, like a bee - sorry, had to be done.

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝