If you go down a few posts when we were extracting the honey, you'll see a picture of the wax "cappings" the bees put on the honey once it has reached the ideal percentage of moisture. (which is typically 17% or below) When you extract honey using an extractor, you cut those cappings off and the honey will be free to flow out of the comb. We let the cappings drain for a few days (and actually got a few more bottles of honey off what was on the cappings) and then gathered the wax cappings to melt. We saw online how to build our own solar wax melter. It required a styrofoam cooler, a plastic food container filled with a little water, paper towel, and a piece of glass that acted as the lid for the cooler. We put paper towel over the plastic food container and secured the paper towel with a rubber band. We set the clump of wax on top of the paper towel. Crazy Bee Man put duct tape around the glass so we didn't cut ourselves on rough edges. We put the homemade wax melter out in the hot sun and let nature do the work. The wax melted and filtered through the paper towel. The piece you see in the picture sits on top of the water, pretty as you please! Now we wouldn't win any wax contests at a fair, but this was our first time and we were pretty pleased with the results. We can melt this wax back down and put it on the frames for the bees, (it has been our experience that bees accept the plastic frames better when there is wax on them) or we could make lotions, salves, balms, etc. with the wax. I really wish our computer screens had scratch and sniff, because this wax smells incredible!!!
