Finally got around to rendering a heap of beeswax, which we had kept from the last few honey harvests, and then making a few beeswax products to stock up the shelves in the ‘Farmacy’!

We render our wax in two stages usually, using gauze paint bags to hold the cell scratchings, which are then placed in a pot of water to melt (leaving the bits of bee and debris inside the bag). The bag is then removed and discarded (or re-used if it isn’t too dirty), the pot removed from the heat. Once the beeswax cools, it sets as a disk on the top of the water and is easy to remove from the pot of water. If the wax scratchings were fairly clean, this is sometimes all that is needed, however for really clean wax for products such as lip balm, it is cleaned if needed and then remelted in a jug placed in a pot of water.

Once the wax has melted again, it is then strained through stocking stretched over reusable paper cups……pouring in just enough to make small blocks that are easy to melt and use in products.

Once the wax has set, the nice clean block of beeswax is easy to remove from the cups, and the cups can be reused another time.

Then the product making began! Beeswax wraps, lip balm, calendula salve, bumps and bruises salve, and calendula lotion bars.

We are well set up with beeswax products for another year or so now!