Great tutorial, my stepfather used to cool his beeswax in square plastic tubs, then when they were cold and hard pull them right off the water. easy to store and weigh :-)
So, do you feed the honey water back to the bees? A cheap pot can be bought at a yard sale or thrift store. Don't upset the home, keepers. Also, an old pillowcase can be used as a filter.
Very nice video. Nice for a small amount of beeswax. However, I question squeezing it into a ball. I wouldn't want the water trapped ferment. Could freak out the new hobbyist beekeeper. I would rather leave it in small cakes of wax and when I get enough I would melt all the small cakes together and make a larger one similar to what you show on the table at the beginning of the video.
Unless you filtered that through a fine filter, like a coffee filter, there will be a layer of propolis on the bottom of the melted wax. The water will dissolve the honey and some of the other soluables, but the propolis is just slightly heavier than the wax. I floats on top the water, and on the bottom of the wax. Here you used something like a muslin. Kitchen roll, or Paper towels, will work, the problem being they tend to fold over unless everything dribbles in slow. Melting the whole cake, then letting the filtered wax settle in a tall thin container, and cool completely, will concentrate the slumgums on the bottom, where you can scrape them off.
Oh. So that’s what those grains stuck to the bottom of my wax wheel were! I scraped them off after filtering a few times. The wheel was pretty pure after that. It looked really good. Thanks for that tidbit of information 😊
beeswax won't rot. Instead of squeezing it into a ball I would leave it as a cake and let it dry out. Then melt it again in clean water and pour it into a small bread mold. This is a small amount of beeswax to work with which is nice.
suggestion if you use a two can setup make a double boiler water in large can raw wax in smaller can (or even better a plastic pail) heat melt wax then strain thru metal fly screen wire top lined with nylon hose material into your mold you will get a clean produce one pass and all straining material can be reused