Monday, 23 July 2018

Separating wax from honey comb

Someone very kindly gave me some honeycomb wax (ie with the honey already removed). They said they weren’t going to find time to process it in to wax. Having now tried it, I am not surprised!
It was quite time consuming and effortful - though if I did it again it would be a little less so as I learn't various things. The hardest part was getting the wax off everything afterwards - including off my toes where molten wax was not very pleasant!

Put the wax in to water in a large pan

Heat until the wax melts. It doesn't look like you will EVER be able to clean it in to something usable

Strain the wax through multiple layers of cheese cloth. I used some fly mesh first and the holes let too much of the grot through.

Cleaning the pans and other utensils was a bit of a trial! Next time (haha) I would put the wax in to multiple layers of cheese cloth and then put it in to the water and heat it up - that way there would only be need to use 1 pan (I used two because I had to pour from one pan to the other through the cheese cloth). There would also be less chance of pouring any of the molten wax on yourself (PAINFUL!)

You can see it is still quite dirty as this is after straining through the fly mesh. Melted it with water again and strained it through several layers of cheese cloth after this and it came out much cleaner.

Once finished I made some wax cream to treat a new chopping board with. cleaning the wax was a lot of effort, but always nice to have home made things, they seem extra special. Doug made the board from a left over piece of work surface.


Not sure what to do with the rest. Perhaps candles will be nice, or maybe I will keep it around to make wax for the chopping boards and we will keep them in lovely condition!

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