Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Candles from my own beeswax.

After cleaning and filtering the discs of wax from my 'crush and strain'  method honey harvest shown in my last post, I ended up with two and a half pounds of pure clean beeswax from my own bees. As a last filtering, I melted the wax in a double boiler and then poured it through a restaurant style grease filter cone, which I set in an empty pineapple juice can (see photo). 
 I had two flexible silicone candle molds- one to make plain votives with pointed tops, and the other for votive-sized bee skep shaped candles. It was fun to set the wicks, pour the candles with a spouted canning ladle, and then carefully pop them out after cooling for about a half hour. Later, the candle bottoms were pressed onto a hot skillet to get them nice and flat.
Altogether, I was able to make 20 candles from the 2.5 lbs of wax- nine little skeps and 11 tall votives, plus a short 1" votive with the last drips of wax. Next year I will buy another mold or two for added variety.

I got my candles done just in time before Christmas...a nice way to end my beekeeping year and bring a warm glow to the dark days to come this winter. 
(Click on each picture to see it larger and more detailed.)