Cleaning My Wax

Today it was too hot to do much else so I set about melting and cleaning my beeswax. I first separated it into 3 groups based on color. The lightest, prettiest wax, then the light brown, and finally the darkest, dirtiest. The wax cappings from yesterday's extraction went in with the clean white wax. You can see the end result in the bottom left hand corner of the following photo.

The lighter brown wax produced the cake on the bottom right, and the darkest dirtiest wax produced the curry colored cake on top. Both the medium and dark wax cakes will need to be melted and strained at least once more. There is still some yuck in there, but this will be good enough for now. Below is what the medium and dark wax looked like before being melted and strained.

And this nasty stuff is the dross that was strained out. It consists of the bodies of dead bees and larva, pollen, etc....

I save every bit of wax that I remove from my hives. I hope to save enough to be able to enter some in the Puyallup Fair next year