Beeswax Candles?

March 13, 2009 5:46 PM

My friends keep bees...they have a ton of beeswax lying around. How do you make candles out of raw beeswax?
posted by QAF to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Here is a quick introduction to it, to further links on to more indepth articles.
posted by mrzarquon at 6:24 PM on March 13, 2009

That link is about how to make candles from prepared beeswax sheets, the kind you can buy at a craft store. If you're working from comb, you need to prepare the wax first, using this method.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:42 PM on March 13, 2009

And this is a more detailed discussion of how to work with beeswax, from 1923!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:45 PM on March 13, 2009

Now, if you want to make those sheets, you might have to drop the bucks for one of these sheeters (interesting industrial photos inside). I haven't located a simple retail sheet press for that pattern so far. But I dunno why anybody would want that phony beesy-cheesy style anyway.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 7:02 PM on March 13, 2009

I was going to post a fair amount of experience at keeping bees and dealing with beeswax. But sculpin did a better job that I could hope to. The only thing I can add to that is be careful with beeswax. If you get paraffin splashed on you, meh, no big deal. But beeswax has a higher melting point and will burn, possibly quite badly.
posted by Ookseer at 2:13 AM on March 14, 2009

Pictures if you follow through please!
posted by nanojath at 11:27 AM on March 25, 2009