JCBrum
Drone Bee
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2009
- Messages
- 1,054
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Birmingham UK
- Hive Type
- 14x12
- Number of Hives
- 8 ish
Having salvaged and re-furbished some unwanted old beehives recently, I was left with the remains of very old grotty comb which had gone mouldy and was full of dead bees and other general detritus. I fumigated it with glacial acetic acid to kill any disease spores and then set about recovering the wax for re-use or trade-in.
A dear friend told me recently, they spent hours, night after night, sitting alone, repeatedly boiling it and filtering it through muslin to recover the wax.
Since my method is simple, and was taught to me by one of the 'old hands', I thought some may be interested in a few pics.
The first thing to do is get a large pan and half fill it with hot water from the tap. Break up the old comb and put it into the water.
Using the hob, bring up the temperature slowly till the wax melts freely, don,t boil it. Stir the mixture to ensure that every small bit is thoroughly wet.
Then transfer the pot to the oven to be maintained at the same temperature for about three hours. This is to ensure that every particle of rubbish absorbs as much water as possible, but don't stir it too much because you want to keep the wax and the water as un-mixed as possible.
When it has cooked for a few hours, at a temperature a bit above the melting point of the wax, and with the lid on, remove it to a cooler place, outside or the garage, and cover it with a cloth to keep it warm, and leave it for a couple of days.
It will cool and stratify into layers according to the density of the various components. This is why the rubbish must be waterlogged, to make it settle in the lower regions.
The wax, being the lightest (least dense), will settle at the top and form a hard 'cake' floating on the water below. There will be an area where wax and rubbish are both present, but if you have 'cooked it properly it will be a very thin boundary.
When it is thoroughly cold and hard, lift the cake with adhering rubbish off the top and set it aside, upside down to dry out for a couple of days or more. That last bit removes the remaining water from the cake.
Then take the dry cake, and with a knife scrape the underside to remove the rubbish layer from the wax layer at the boundary. This will leave you with a cake of wax which is certainly good enough for trade-in, and probably better than most.
If you then wish to go further, maybe candle making or wax exhibition, you should take the cake and re-melt it in a clean pan. Don't over heat it or it will lose it's pale colour.
At that stage you should arrange something like a 'coffee' filter over a third pan, in a warm oven and filter the wax through it. It will be very slow and might take all night to go through the filter, whilst being kept warm, but it will be beautifully clean and hopefully a nice pale golden colour.
I attach a few pics containing both scraped, and un-scraped cakes, showing the top surface of a cake as well as the underside after stage one.
Hopefully this is of some passing interest to some. JC
A dear friend told me recently, they spent hours, night after night, sitting alone, repeatedly boiling it and filtering it through muslin to recover the wax.
Since my method is simple, and was taught to me by one of the 'old hands', I thought some may be interested in a few pics.
The first thing to do is get a large pan and half fill it with hot water from the tap. Break up the old comb and put it into the water.
Using the hob, bring up the temperature slowly till the wax melts freely, don,t boil it. Stir the mixture to ensure that every small bit is thoroughly wet.
Then transfer the pot to the oven to be maintained at the same temperature for about three hours. This is to ensure that every particle of rubbish absorbs as much water as possible, but don't stir it too much because you want to keep the wax and the water as un-mixed as possible.
When it has cooked for a few hours, at a temperature a bit above the melting point of the wax, and with the lid on, remove it to a cooler place, outside or the garage, and cover it with a cloth to keep it warm, and leave it for a couple of days.
It will cool and stratify into layers according to the density of the various components. This is why the rubbish must be waterlogged, to make it settle in the lower regions.
The wax, being the lightest (least dense), will settle at the top and form a hard 'cake' floating on the water below. There will be an area where wax and rubbish are both present, but if you have 'cooked it properly it will be a very thin boundary.
When it is thoroughly cold and hard, lift the cake with adhering rubbish off the top and set it aside, upside down to dry out for a couple of days or more. That last bit removes the remaining water from the cake.
Then take the dry cake, and with a knife scrape the underside to remove the rubbish layer from the wax layer at the boundary. This will leave you with a cake of wax which is certainly good enough for trade-in, and probably better than most.
If you then wish to go further, maybe candle making or wax exhibition, you should take the cake and re-melt it in a clean pan. Don't over heat it or it will lose it's pale colour.
At that stage you should arrange something like a 'coffee' filter over a third pan, in a warm oven and filter the wax through it. It will be very slow and might take all night to go through the filter, whilst being kept warm, but it will be beautifully clean and hopefully a nice pale golden colour.
I attach a few pics containing both scraped, and un-scraped cakes, showing the top surface of a cake as well as the underside after stage one.
Hopefully this is of some passing interest to some. JC