My friend and I like to dabble with making our own soap and cosmetics etc. and was wondering how we would go about seperating the wax from honeycombs so we could use the wax for lip balms. Also can we take the honeycombs and roll it out somehow to make candles? I guess the problem to be solved is how do we seperate the honey from the wax. We have local bee people we can buy the honeycombs from. - Thanks

-- Kathy (jubilant@ncweb.com), January 26, 2001

Answers

Kathy, most beekeeping supply stores sell the wax with out the honey, in sheets even, so that keepers can use it in their supers. If I wanted clean wax for candles etc. that is the route I would go.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), January 26, 2001.

Kath! Heat separates the honey from the wax. We used to put comb in a large pan over another large pan of hot water. Squeeze the comb after it's warm enough, to remove the honey. It'll work by squeezing between two boards with groves cut in'm or a lard press. Many ways to do it and the result is still the same. hoot. Matt. 24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), January 26, 2001.

If you go to this link you'll find plans to build a solar was melter that will do exactly what you want. Here's another one, though it's not as detailed. Just in case the html links above don't work, here are the urls so you can copy and paste: http://members.aol.com/beetools/solar.htm http://www.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/solmltr.htm

-- Wingnut (wingnut@moment.net), January 26, 2001.

I'm sure there's probably a lot of different ways to do this but Ole Man Moses that lived just down from us had sealed up the tub from an old washing machine and built a basket on what was the aggitator. When he turned that thing on it slung all that honey out into the tub. Then he just removed the tub, heated it in some hot water and poured the honey out into his jars. Now, he had a lot of hives and had to find a way to do it easy cause he was 95 and still keeping bee's, running a small sawmill and gardening. He said he had never been to a doctor. Gary

-- Gary in AL (gmattox@integrity.com), January 26, 2001.

From what I understand, you can crush the comb and let the honey drain out. Then take the relatively dry comb and lay it out for the bees to clean the last of the honey off. Apparently, they do a really good job. Then melt the wax in hot water. The junk will fall into the water, and once cool, the wax will form a cake at the top of the water. Someone please correct me if this is wrong. I've never done it myself, but have read a bit about it.

Following is a url about Top Bar Hives, but about a third of the way down is quite a bit of information on extracting honey and wax from comb called - IV. HARVESTING HONEY AND BEESWAX FROM TOP BAR HIVES

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/agriculture/entomology/beekeeping/ general/management/top_bar_faqs/tbhf.html

Good luck!

-- Laura Jensen (lrjensen@nwlink.com), January 31, 2001.