How to Harvest Bee’s Wax

So, you got into bee keeping. You bought or built the hive, got the suit and tools, and have harvested your first batch of honey. What do you do with the comb wax. Many people put it back into the hive for the bees to clean up and reuse. Some harvest the wax and then use it in some homemade projects like beard balm, lotion, and candles. Bees are insects and they are dirty. They bring in pollen, dirt and other debris and no matter how hard you try to save all the bees inevitably you will end up with various bee body parts all over the comb. How do you then render the wax so that it is clean and usable?

To start you will need the following:

1. Fillet knife 

2. Putty knife used if you have foundation in your frames.

3. An old pot one that can hold a couple gallons of water. While bees wax is edible, I do not enjoy it. So, use a pot that you do not cook with

4. Old Spoon

5. Outdoor single burner. You can also use your stove if you have the space for a sizeable pot.

6. Double boil pot

7. Cheese cloth.

8. Clean container  

9. Some sort of mold. You can get molds for processing wax a lot of different places I got mine from Mann Lake https://www.mannlakeltd.com/ . I like Mann Lake since they also have educational information on their site. (No affiliation)

10. Mold release

11. Water

Some additional considerations. A lot of the assembly required hives you can get online also provide you with frame foundations. The foundation sits in the frame and gives the bees something to work off. They reduce the likelihood of your bees cross combing which reduces the number of times you need to go into the hive to correct the cross combing, eases honey harvesting but, it means you will need a clean putty knife in lui of a fillet knife to scrape the bees wax off the foundation and remove it from the frame. You will also need to be more careful so you do not damage your foundation and can reuse it.

Step 1: removing the wax.

Using the fillet knife or the putty knife removes the wax from the frames. You will also see wax around the outside edge of the frame. It is good wax so remove that as well. Set all this aside. 

Step 2: heat the water.

Put a couple inches of water into the bottom of the pot and bring it to a low boil. 

Step 3: add the comb.

Take the comb you removed and set aside and break it up. Slowly add it to the water. You will want to stir this occasionally using an old spoon. If you are doing this outside, you will attract your bees to you unless you are in a different county than where your hive is. If you do not have a large quantity, you can do it inside. The aroma of freshly melting comb wax is a kind of sweet musk. In my experience it is not prone to lingering long after the boil is complete.  

Step 4: allow it to cool.

Now that all the comb is melted allow the pot and water to cool. The wax will float to the top, debris will tend to settle to the bottom or get stuck under the layer of melted wax. 

Step 5: remove cooled wax and clean off large debris.

Now that the wax is solid and can be worked use the fillet knife, working it around the sides of the pot to remove the wax. You will have a chunk of wax clean on top and dirty on bottom and dirty water below that. Using the same fillet knife clean off the bottom of the wax disc. I slice it off like I would a piece of cheese. 

Step 6: double boil and melt wax. 

Dump the old water out of the main pot and set up a double boil pot. You can get wax melting pots or use a small pot inside of a bigger pot. Fill the large pot with clean water enough so that when you place in the second pot it goes up about halfway up its sides. Do not put so much water in the wax pot floats. Use medium heat, you do not want the water to boil. Break up your wax disc into smaller parts the smaller the faster they melt but I would not take up too much time doing this. Add the wax slowly. Do not put in wax higher than the water level. 

Step 7: strain the wax.

I use cheese cloth because it is disposable. Layer the cheese cloth 3-5 times over a secondary container. I like to use something that can double as another double boiler. As your cheese cloth becomes clogged move to a cleaner section of cloth or replace it. You can repeat this step as many times as you like to get a cleaner wax. 

Step 9: Pour your wax in a mold.

Set up your mold to receive the wax. I use silicon molds from Mann Lake. I do not use mold release and I do not seem to have an issue with the wax coming out of the mold. If you are using something that is more ridged, you may need mold release. Reheat the wax in your double boiler and pour the wax into your mold. You know have a block of wax that can be used in a number of salves, beard balms, lotions and more.

Some more Notes: Why is the store’s bees wax a different color than mine? This has to do with the pollen content of your wax. It will be higher since cheese cloth cannot pull out the small particulates. To get white bees wax companies will use finer filtration or even bleach it. It can also be due to the age of the comb. If you have never harvested wax from your hive before chances are the wax is a dark brown color before rendering. Thousands of bees have walked across the surface of the wax and dirt gets caught in it. Most of this will fall out since dirt is heavier than wax. If you do notice brown coloration to your wax, you can repeat step 3 and allow it to boil again in water, so the dirt falls out. It can be repeated as needed use clean water each time.