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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Today I'm Trying the Solar Wax Melter

Today I'm taking the cappings from the crush-and-strain harvest I did to fill the chunk honey jars and trying to see if my solar wax melter works.

Some of you may remember that I built the solar wax melter last year, but didn't do it until October when it wasn't hot enough long enough in the day. The outside temperature needs to be at 79 for most of the day to make it work.

Today the high is supposed to be 92, and when I put the box out at 9:15, the temperature was 76 and rising. We'll see. I'll report back later and let you know if it worked this time.

As you will see from the slideshow, it worked just great! I wish I had left it alone until after dark. When I removed the paper towel, melted wax that hadn't filtered through it yet poured onto my counter and I would have saved that mess if I had waited. I pulled it indoors at 4 PM and the results were gorgeous as you'll see in the slide show. I can't wait to use it again, with my new lessons learned from today's first trial.

The pictures below will play as a slideshow, but if you click on the picture, you can go to the album itself which has captions explaining the pictures.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:08 PM

    Linda,

    I am so grateful for this information because I was wondering what to do with the wax capping I was saving and thought it would cost me more money to purchase a melter.
    Even I can do this!!
    By the way I am also a Sagittarius, birthday November 30, 1951

    Thank you so much for your wonderful posts.
    Annette

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:02 PM

    Linda, this is Reinbeau from Beemaster. That is great! I'm going to have to try that next summer - of course it'll have to be high summer around here to have any hope of it working. Nice slide show!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Do you notice that the paper towel wicks the wax and drips it on the bottom of the cooler?

    I've had to pull the container out and pour the wax out of the cooler bottom and put it in the container.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5:03 PM

    Hi Linda,
    The solar melter works great. But, what is the darker stuff left on top? Is it propalis? I'm only melting comb from supers so there is no brood comb.
    Andy

    ReplyDelete
  5. The darker stuff left on top is called "slumgum" It is made up of nonwax stuff in the wax - like bee parts, SHBs that may have gotten crushed with the crush and strain, etc. It gets dark because it gets so hot in the solar wax melter that it in essence burns up.

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