Wax Melting

Well I'm finally getting around to dealing with the wax cappings from honey extracting day. I looked at several web sites on solar melting and it all seems to be about the same - rinse and dry the wax, make little balls and put it on paper towels over a plastic container of water, put the whole thing in a box that has been painted black and has a glass cover, and put that entire thing in the sun. The sun should heat the box and wax hot enough to melt and as the wax passes through the paper towel it gets all the gunk filtered out, eventually solidifying again at the bottom of the container. Then at the end of the day we pop the wax out and voila! clean beeswax ready for some other task.

In the true spirit of beekeeping, where you ask anyone their opinion and it will usually end with "but you can do it anyway you want" I am doing it differently. I don't have a glass covered box handy, but I do have a nice black canning pot in which I make my jams. (Oh man we made some really good sour cherry jam this year!). And I have a plexiglass sheet that I can use as a cover. Hopefully it is close enough to actual glass to work. I am going to give it a go tomorrow and/or Sunday.