Fresholi | Melting Pot Café

I belong to a chicken group anda lady on there , realising I made soaps and candles asked if I was intereste in her bees wax from her hives.
She is going to let me know how muchshe has and if anyone is interested I can give you her details.

Ive never made beeswax candles but I have to confes I may give it a try. Dont know if we can use locally sourced beeswax in our balms as obviously we wont have msds, but for own use may be useful.

She doesnt at moment have any honey

Let me know what you think.

That sounds great

I think you could make your own MSDS for the bees wax - best way would be to get a copy of one from somewhere (maybe SK) and then adapt it for the locally produced wax

Check so it's cleaned already and only wax. I had a bag of unclean beeswax from our local guy and I couldn't get the stuff separated. It was such a mess. Smelled fantastic though.  :mwaha:

Great question Michelle, I was wondering this too as my father in law has his own beehives, and I use his wax and his honey too, but wasn't sure on the msds front. It would be good to know.

 :buttrf:

Hmmm... that sounds interesting.  I have a neighbor who has hives, I wonder what she does with the wax?  I wouldn't know the first thing about cleaning though, as Eva mentioned.

About MSDS, HERE (http://www.forum.fresholi.co.uk/index.php/topic,18464.msg280137.html#msg280137)is a thread about it.  :)

I get my beeswax from a local beekeeper for my products and I made my own MSDS, basing it on one from a supplier (maybe SK).

If it's not cleaned yet, it's a pain, but this is how I do it:  I have a big pot that is my designated 'wax pot' and I put in the wax, some water and a splash of vinegar (helps separate out the dirty stuff).  I heat it on low until the wax melts.  I let it sit until the wax has completely hardened, and then I upturn the pot in the sink (the wax should come out as one piece, and the dirty water below it), and I shave off the gross stuff on the bottom of the wax round. Then I repeat, until there isn't anything left to shave off and it comes out clean.  Last time with no vinegar.

Two tricks I've found to getting the wax into small bits that are easier to work with:
1) put into small moulds, no more than 1 cm deep, and crumble when it is solid but still soft
or
2) splash a little bit of wax at a time into a basin with cold water, and then let dry complely

That's great advice Fiddletree  ;D Thanks  ;D

I've got a load of beeswax that my friend who's uncle is a bee keeper gave to me, he said I can have as much as I want but it's been sat on top of a cupboard for ages as I didn't know what to do with it as it's got dead bees in. So I cheated and use bought beeswax instead but it would be lovely to use it so can use as much local stuff as possible  :)

Gosh Fiddletree thats really good info. Thanks all.

You al seem to have your potential suppliers anyway so Il tel her to put it on eaby. Im just wondering how Id make candles with it...hmm some research needed I think and would I need to get the bees out lol

Doing what I said gets the bees out in the first go.  Absolutely everything goes to the bottom and makes the water gross and there will be a layer of brown stuff on the absolute bottom of the wax round that you can shave off.  'Real' beeswax that has been minimally processed has a much more lovely scent than the pellets offered by suppliers!

It's really not hard. Use an old pot that you don't need for anything else and in short time dead bees are gone :)

I love beeswax and I make tealights with it...  I haven't found a local supplier yet.  Apparently you can harvest either the wax or the honey but not both.  I so don't understand that, but it's what I've been told by several local beekeepers....

I was wondering about how you would  clean it, thanks Fiddletree....

no, that's not true, there is a lot of wax that remains.  There are the cappings (that make the really clean white wax, it is gorgeous), and there are the parts that the bees don't completely fill with honey near the top of the hive.  If someone has a number of hives, they'll have a lot of wax.  Most beekeepers send their wax off to be remade into sheets to 'start' their hives every year, but they don't need all of it. 

Ahhh - thank you for that...