The bees often make what we call burr comb also called wild comb. It's just comb that they create outside of the frame. To make the hive more organized, we sometimes scrape the small bits of extra comb and set it aside. We also collect more wax when we cut the cappings off of the honey in the frames before we harvest it. What to do with all this beeswax? Melt it and filter it of course! So we built a solar wax melter. This uses the heat of the sun to melt the wax and we can filter out the yucky stuff, or "slum gum" and we are left with buttery yellow pure beeswax! We used an old window for the lid, and placed foam insulation on the bottom and sides. So far our melter has heated to 190 degrees Fahrenheit but is usually around 175 on a sunny, Pacific Northwest summer day. The wax melting point is around 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so the wax melter works well
for our needs.
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| Put the wax comb on top of the metal screen, |
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| Let it melt through the screen, |
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| and drip into the baking pan and cool. |
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| Voila! Filtered beeswax! |
