I may have mentioned in passing that my bro-in-law keeps bee hives. He had two hives last season which he combined into one large hive for this season. His reasoning … it was much easier to take care of one hive with one Queen only. Makes sense to me.
Last season my husband and I went and helped him extract the honey from the hives and ended up extracting about 30 lbs of honey. The process is quite interesting although it is time consuming. Of course with the honey came the wax we had to scrape off the frames in order to access the honey. I kept the 1 lb of honey infused wax thinking it’d be fun to make candles. It didn’t get done.
This season was a repeat of last except we extracted around 90 lbs of honey and 4 lbs of wax infused with honey. So together with last years wax and this years wax I decided to make candles. I investigated the process and it seemed easy.
The first thing I needed to do was gather my supplies … clean beeswax, jars, lids, wicks, wick stickums, wax melting utensils and thermometer. All of these can be bought including the wax. But I had wax from when we extracted the honey so I just needed to clean it.
Cleaning the wax was a process. I had to melt it to remove the honey and other impurities. It’s easy but time consuming. The wax is put into cheesecloth and placed into simmering water. The wax slowly melts and filters through the cheesecloth into the water. The empty cheesecloth sack is removed from the water and the wax is left to cool. As it cools it rises to the top and forms a hard crust. The crust needs to be totally free of all impurities in order to be used. The process takes about 6 hours before the wax can be removed from atop the water/honey mixture. I had to do this process a number of times before my wax was free from impurities.
Out of approximately 5 pounds of wax mixed with honey and other impurities I got 12.4 ounces of pure, clean beeswax. Unbelievable how much honey and other stuff was in the wax. Of those 4 plus odd pounds of impurities most was honey but because of boiling in water the honey was mixed in with no way to extract it. A learning lesson for next time.
I was now ready to begin the candle making process.
Step 1 - melt the wax
Step 2 - place wicks in candle holders & hold steady with popsicle stick
Step 3 - place wicked holders onto racks ready for pouring
Step 4 - pour wax into measuring cup
Step 5 - pour wax from cup into candle holders
Step 6 - leave poured candles in place until wax is fully cooled
Step 7 - cut the wick to size
Step 8 - place lid on, if using
Step 9 - burn your candle
And that’s the procedure. Of course if you’re colouring or scenting your wax there are a few more steps. And there’s also a certain temperature the wax must be before pouring in order for it to adhere to the container.
It was an interesting experience making the candles. Beeswax candles, while lovely, are very expensive to make and cleanup is hard. I’ve been doing some research and testing of other more cost efficient clean waxes. I’ve also been testing a few scents to see what’s what and decide how deep I want to delve into the world of candle making. Time will tell.
Until the next time.
It seems it is a labour of love, which in my humble opinion, balances things out. Also if they wanted to make a larger, more diverse candle inventory, they would need scents and colouring, more jars/wicks etc.
Seems like the end results are beautiful and certainly worth the effort. Without taking your time into consideration, how does your costs compare with the retail price?