Wax and the Solar Melter

Bees eat roughly seven kilograms of honey to secrete one kilogram of wax, which is why drawn comb is the most expensive thing in a hive and why beekeepers never throw it away lightly. Your cappings, the thin white lid the bees put on ripe honey, are the cleanest wax you will ever get: about one to two kilograms per hundred of honey extracted, and worth more than the rest of the year's scrapings.

Continue reading:

1. Seven kilos of honey for one of wax
2. Why drawn comb is never thrown away
3. Cappings, the clean wax
4. Old brood comb
5. A kilo a year
6. Never direct heat
7. The double boiler
8. The solar melter
9. The steam melter
10. Filtering and grades
11. Rotating the brood comb
12. What wax is worth
13. Drawing comb costs stores
14. What a kilo can become