Beeswax Candle Making

This week I missed my bees terribly, but found a new respect for beeswax and it’s cost!

The amount of work it takes to get beeswax cappings from their unrefined state and take that to the pure wax we see in the store is remarkable.

For 2 seasons/years now I have had a freezer full of frames of brood and honey left here by my beekeeping sister Nao at Honey Grove. As she left for her next adventure in beekeeping she told me to keep the frames and feed them to my bees if they needed it.

But at the end of this season I found that I had more then enough honey to feed them for the winter, and so I decided to inspect the frozen frames. Once I started pulling frames out of the freezer I realized that many of them were filled with culled brood, pollen and small amounts of honey so I pulled them out and decided that I would try my hand at making beeswax candles from scratch–literally!

Now usually a beekeeper would give these frames to the bees to clean out, for you see bees are very industrious and do not like an unclean home!. However  most of the brood had rotted so badly I just could not imagine making the bees clean them, this was probably a bit impractical, but I cleaned the frames anyways and have saved them for future use.

In the end I added a few frames of uncapped honey from my bees this past year, and began the task of scraping them all down. Now usually beekeepers only use the cappings {the wax that covers the honey} to make candles with, so this will probably be the only time that I actually scrape frames out, it is just too unpractical otherwise, as the bees will now have to build the frames up again from the beginning.

After much work I realized that not all of it was going to be melted down. There was a lot of pollen, Royal Jelly, and brood, not to mention this cool black comb that seemed to not be made of wax, but rather a black papery substance, which I now know is called “Slumglum” and is composed of pupal lining and excrement from the bee larvae.  Apparently bees love it and it is used to attract swarms, so perhaps I shall keep it around!

You can see from the photos above and below, my frames, the beautiful pollen, honey and loads of wax.

Next I took the comb that was usable, and put it in one of my big pasta pots with holes in the bottom and let the honey drip out for the net 24 hours. This honey was not all capped and so has fermented because of high water levels, making it unsuitable for humans to eat.

Once most of the honey had dripped through I mixed the comb it with warm water.  What this does is it dissolves any of the leftover honey in the crevices of the wax, leaving only beeswax comb that can be squished into balls and ready for the next step.

At this point I had spent many, many hours scraping and draining and melting and separating and I was amazed with what I came away with! A plate of beeswax balls, a small plate of edible honeycomb, a bag full of pollen filled comb which I will give back to the bees, a large jar of honey that I decided would be ancestor offerings, and an even larger jar of sacred honey water.

Sacred Honey water has a special use as it is will be specifically for land offerings and poured onto the ground. I can’t wait to offer some of it up to the trees in my back-yard in thanks for the branches they give for my shamanic tools, to the earth, and to the plant spirits in thanks for everything they do to support us. This pollen and honey filled water feels very sacred to me, and I have a LOT to be thankful on this earth for!

Next I was ready to take my wax balls of sweet goodness and melt them down for refinement. This was quite the process as you can see in the photo below on the plate, there was a LOT of stuff that just simply did not melt and needed to be strained out.

The process was two-fold and required a second melting with water and then allowing the wax to harden and separate.

Once that was done a last melting and pouring through a mesh cloth was done so the last of the residue could be strained out. This was well worth the effort as you can see from the first image of the dirty water and speckley wax, to the last one with pure clean beautiful wax!

Yesterday, on my third day I was finally ready to make some hard won, hand dipped candles!

They are small, but will be cherished and used as prayer candles on my altar.

Thank you bees, your hard work is now bringing the smell of summer sunshine into my home and bringing smiles to my family!