From Garbage to Gold: Making Pure Beeswax

today we're going to take this and turn it into  this one of the really cool things about keeping   bees is that honey is not really the only product  of the hive you can get honey you can get wax that   we're going to do today you can get pollen you  can get propolis out of them there's lots of   really cool things that come from bees and today  we're going to focus right directly on rendering   the wax that comes out of the hives so this is  the wax from our wax cappings and in order to   make a candle like this you've got to do something  with it it's not at all usable in this state right   here and in order to do that you've got to have a  few things you need something to filter it through   this is just screen wire it's actually plastic  screen we'll have to figure out if it'll hold   up to the boiling water or not you're going to  need a panty hose you're going to need a large   pot and you're going to need something that  you can make a double boiler out of as well   you're also going to need a fish cooker Because  unless you're just really really Brave this is   not a good idea to do inside of your house in  the kitchen it can make a really big mess and   wax is notoriously really difficult to get off of  anything the first thing we we want to do is load   up our big giant pot here with the wax I've  got a couple I've got wax wax from a couple   of different sources here I've got some bur comb  this is bur comb it's basically just the wax that   the bees tend to build in between the frames or  they build it between the top bars of the frames   and the top of the hive or the bottom bars of  the Box before on top of it rather so that's   some really that's a really good source of of wax  there I've also got quite a bit of Wax cappings these wax cappings are really always my   main source of wax of course there's  quite a bit of honey in here as well it's sticking to the bottom because all the honey  is on the bottom oh there it went I've also got   some random wax here that I've just kind of saved  over the years here's a ball of what was probably   Burke home here's some stuff that I rendered a  long time ago that's just been laying around and   I just kind of want to get it integrated back  into a big wax cake get it cleaned out again and make something a little bit better out of  it just a few more pieces of bur comb as well   you're really your best bet when you're tending  your hives and I don't do this like I should but   your best bet when you're tending your hives  is to keep some kind of a little bucket like   this and just put your bur comb in this bucket  as you go through your hives and clean out your   hives because that's a really good source of wax  as well at this point we want to take a hose and   fill this up to a little bit  above the level of The Wire and let it boil for five or ten minutes maybe even  more but while we're waiting on that we can get   our next step ready all right so it's starting to  boil here so we'll just give it a little stir with   a paint stirrer turn down the heat some too  because I really don't want it to boil over   basically you're just trying to make a big nasty  slurry of wax and water of course that's not the   only stuff in here you've got all kinds of Hive  trash there may be some cocoons in here if the   bees have been using those frames for for a brood  rearing it's just all kinds of junk in here that's   just got to get out one thing to remember if you  decide to do this is you need to have plenty of   room in your pot I had too much in there and I  had to dip some out because it was boiling over so of course the whole point here is to filter out  all the bad stuff so we need something to filter   it into so I've got about a five gallon metal  Bowl here and we're going to put some screen   wire on top and this is actually plastic and  I've checked and I'm thinking it'll probably   survive just for long enough so that we can  get a couple of filter filtrations through it if you got some metal screen wire laying around I  would definitely recommend that but I think this   will do just for what we need to do so this  has been boiling now for about 10 minutes or   so I really didn't time it but what you really  just need to make sure of is that it boils for   a little while and all your wax gets melted and  it just kind of incorporates into one big nasty   hot slurry so let's go ahead and take this out  and we'll filter it through the screen and then   we'll dump our what I had to dip out back into  here and boil it for a couple minutes and add it   to it as well and by the way it'd probably be wise  to wear some gloves or something because this is   hot wax and it'll be super hot and it'll stick to  you as well so just be really careful doing this so you want to try to drain as much  out of this as you can because this   is your wax right here and this is  not something that you want to waste so at this point all that we can really do is  weigh and unfortunately the lighting getting all   that grade in here but if you can see it of course  you can see the reflection of the top of the shed   in this of course but there's a layer of wax on  the top before the silt and all the trash really   start so basically what's going on here is the wax  floats to the top water is denser than the wax so   it goes to the bottom and there's honey down there  as well so there's basically three layers of junk   going on in here so what we're going to do now  is just set a time lapse and watch this cool off so this has been cooling off here for about  three hours or so and for future reference   you might want to not do this if you've got a  bucket of Honey being cleaned up by the bees   because you see we've got quite a few visitors  and unfortunately some of them got into the wax   and they obviously didn't really make it so what  we need to do now is get this wax cake off of here   and it looks like the water has cooled down pretty  much to where I can touch it without the fear of   getting burned so I should be able to pry this  out of here with minimal difficulty let's try it oh yeah so you can see that wasn't quite cooled off  we've got a good bit of wax right in here   that we need to go ahead and get out as well  we need to do something with this liquid as   well because if I don't do something with this  liquid it's really going to kill a lot of bees so you can see there's a pretty big benefit of  trying to do this operation inside where there   aren't any bees but this is what we ended  up with with our very first filtration you   see we've still got quite a bit of junk on the  bottom not a big deal because the pantyhose is   going to filter that stuff out for us what we  need to do now is take this wax cake right here   break it up and put it into our  pot and make a double boiler looking like a pretty good yield from all of that  all of that stuff that we put in that is a good   bit of wax that's a good three quarters of an inch  thick right there we'll get the bees out of here now for this again you want to  set up some kind of a double   boiler and it really doesn't have to be fancy at all I'm just using two pots  that kind of happen to fit on   fit on each other but you don't  want to use direct heat for this all right guys so at this point the wax is melted  and we're ready to go ahead and pour it up I'm   going to pour it into this bucket first to filter  all the very fine particulates out and get it   good and clean and unfortunately the pantyhose  that I bought won't fit around the top of this   bucket so what I did is I found this metal pipe  put the panty hose on the top of it and I'm just   going to pour it straight down into this pipe  and it should filter out through here without   too much trouble down here are my molds I've  got some of my wife's baking pans lined with   parchment paper so I promise you there's quite a  bit at stake right now and what I'm going to do   is pour my wax into these molds and just let  it sit here and cool off and at that point I   should be able to lift the wax cakes right out  of these molds no problem so and this is here   for just a just to hold this parchment paper  down so it doesn't curl up so let's go ahead   and see what we can do about pouring this  into this filter and making some wax cakes There's   water in the bottom of this one  so I'm trying to dribble it out. actually I think what will happen  is that water will go to the bottom   and I'll just be able to separate  it without too much trouble all right guys so let's check out what we ended  up with so this one right here was the one that   kind of had the water in the junk on the bottom  and I just left it out and the bees cleaned it up   for me there's a few specks in there but really  not that big of a deal but that's a nice cake   that's a really nice cake of wax right there let's  get this one out and see what it's looking like yeah that is just beautiful I wish that y'all  were here to smell this and see the color on this   it's just a deep deep yellow color just beautiful  beautiful stuff here let's let's get one more here Here we go. I moved out into the sunlight so y'all could  really kind of get an appreciation for the   color of this stuff and it is just beautiful  that's the dirty one right there there you go so here's our candle mold here and we won't make  this entire cylinder this is a really really large   cylinders we'll make about half of this kind of  about the size that you saw earlier and this is   a pretty crude way to do all of this my wife  has actually got a proper setup in the house   but I'm just kind of doing this all outside  so I'm just kind of making do with what I've   got so if I can get some of these wax cakes in  this jar we'll see if we can get some wax melted so guys that's pretty well gonna do it for this  video we successfully took all of this really   nasty looking junk that you see right here and  we made this pretty nice looking candle out of   it you can see there's just a little bit of trash  on the bottom here and a little divot in the top   here and that's where a bee flew into it while the  wax was still I was still wet and I had to dig her   out and this is what we have left over as far as  wax goes we still have these three cakes left over   and uh I think that's a pretty good haul this is  actually about two years worth of beeswax out of   my five hives and I only get the wax for the  most part out of the wax cappings off of the   honey frames and as you can tell there's just  not a ton of wax in there so this represents   about two years worth of scraping the wax cappings  off of those frames something pretty interesting   here that I wanted to show y'all and y'all have  probably already noticed it but this is a candle   that was made out of 100 beeswax and this is  a candle that was made out of 100 beeswax the   difference here is the wax from this candle came  from the Blue Ridge honey company which is I don't   I'm not sure I'm guessing 150 miles from here I'm  not 100% sure on that it's a good distance from   us and this came of course from my backyard right  here and the difference is the plants they gather   the honey from they take the honey and they eat  the honey and they transform it into wax and of   course it always depends on what kind of plants  they're getting the honey from what the honey   looks like therefore it always depends on what  kind of honey they have to eat what the wax looks   like they even smell just a little bit different  this one right here has a very very sweet Aroma   to it and this one right here has very sweet  Aroma to it as well but it's a little bit deeper   um I don't know there's a very faint difference  but there is a difference which is really   interesting to me as far as the plants and the  trees and so forth that they're Gathering nectar   out of and this is the result different color  waxes this right here is really the the color   that I think about when I think about pure beeswax  not so much this darker color but these are nice   too so anyway I thought that was pretty cool  I thought I'd share that with y'all but that's   going to do it for this video thank you all for  watching and I will see y'all on the next one

Channel: Fall Line Ridge

Views: 1,589,398

Keywords: fall line ridge, honey, beeswax, wax, rendering, wax rendering, homesteading, beekeeping, DIY, candles, candle making

Id: dOe70WEal98

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 05 2022