Keeping bees means that eventually you will have on your hands old bee comb. And you will have to decide what to do with it! Luckily there are many uses for bee wax but first it needs to be melted down so the impurities can be easily removed.

Method #1
We being in the middle of January and wanting to learn how to melt my first bee wax made for an interesting experience. It’s bee wax. It melts at 65C. How hard could this be?? well let me just say don’t try simply putting some comb into a pot and turn it on until the wax melts. It takes a long time, the impurities burn easily and stink, and clean-up… well it’s easier to simply buy a new pot.

Method #2
So now we’re in April, the weather is getting better, there are few bars harvested from the over-wintered bees and not wanting to repeat January’s experiment, onto the web we go! Soon enough, by reading some other people’s experiences a winner is found. So this time the wax is melted IN water! Much easier. No burning. Better cleanup. The hot melted wax & water is poured through coarse screen to remove any large bits and into a clean container to cool. The wax as it cools will congeal on the surface of the water and once cold, easy to remove and save for further refining. The next step would be to melt the wax again and pour it through a fine mesh say like a pantyhose. This step I did not do… since it was time to move onto

Method #3
It’s June, the weather is getting better, the sun is warm and why not BUILD something! I found some plans here to give me an idea where to start. I used some 5/8 plywood scraps I had about, some 1×3″ pine, and some 1/4″ ply. The glass I bought as well as the black paint. It went together over the course of a couple evenings after work.

The plans call for insulation and a metal pan. I decided I could always add those things if it needed it. The first time I tried it out with a BBQ digital thermometer at 3pm in the afternoon, it got up to 62C! Looks like this thing just might work!

Over the next couple of days I gave it another coat of paint, sealed up some obvious large gaps where heat could escape and decided to try it out with actual bee comb. Starting about 12:30pm on a sunny day with an outdoor temp in the high teens (yes in June) the melter reached a max of 76C and the wax was slowly melting, running down and collecting in the pan in the bottom.

I have several combs and bits of wax about and so have been melting them down durning the day while I am at work. THe melter obviously cannot be oriented directly at the sun all day, but setting it for best angle around 1-2pm seems to work fine. This unit is about 20″ (18″ glass) and so lets in a lot of sunlight when off angle.

The down side it, that is it a large volume to heat up, but since it is working well I am not worried. I will still be trying various changes to see how to improve it. Some insulation, maybe some tinfoil or store bought disposable aluminum trays too. If I use the metal tray, it will be more slippery for everything to slide down including the unwanted debris, so I might need a small screen at the bottom. But this could get clogged easily too. I currently have a few nails sticking up through the bottom to stick the comb onto, but it makes it awkward to clean off the remains. The angle this unit sits at (~27 degrees) might mean the nails are not needed.

Bottom line, it works well, it uses free energy and makes nice clean beeswax. It’s even gotten up to melting temps on what we would call an overcast day.

The wax in the pan will need remelting to turn it into one solid piece, but that can be done later on in the melter as well just y moving the pan up into the upper chamber.