The 3 Steps To Render Your Own Beeswax
Lesson 1
Rendering your own beeswax doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, the process is very easy once you know some of the insider tricks. In this course, you’ll discover the materials you’ll need and the simple process to follow to render your own beeswax with little to no budget.
Tools & Supplies You’ll Need
To render your own wax, you’ll need the following materials:
Item | Quantity | What It Looks Like |
|---|---|---|
Unrendered beeswax | As much as you have |  |
1 |  | |
$10 thrift store microwave | 1 |  |
Disposable chopsticks | 2 |  |
Deep plastic container (empty 5 lb. honey tubs work wonderfully!) | 1 |  |
5 yards or more |  | |
2 |  |
Before we get started, please give note to this important warning:
WARNING
Do not use nice equipment for rendering your beeswax! Beeswax sticks tenaciously to everything it touches (see the video 00:​45 to see what it did to the inside of the microwave) and it never comes off.
We recommend you get inexpensive equipment that you can afford to lose (such as the thrift store microwave) and that you try to contain the wax as much as possible.
Make sure you never use this equipment for anything other than beeswax.
Wax Rendering Process
Rendering beeswax is very simple process that follows 3 basic steps:
- Melting the Wax
- Straining Wax To Remove Impurities
- Letting the Wax Harden
The rest of this course will take a look at each of these in a little more depth.
Step 1: Melting the Wax - Video 0​1:​32
The easiest way to clean beeswax is to melt it down to a liquid and strain it through a filtering material to remove impurities.
To melt your beeswax, simply put your wax cappings or other un-rendered beeswax into a glass microwaveable container (again we like using Pyrex liquid measuring cups). Feel free to pack in as much as will reasonably fit.
Once you have the microwavable container filled, put it in the microwave and melt the wax at 1 minute intervals broken up by approximately 20-30 seconds of thorough stirring.
Repeat this process as often as needed until the beeswax is entirely melted.
Important Note
You should not put the beeswax in for more than 1 minute at a time because it can superheat the wax and make it splatter everywhere. Additionally, you should always have a 20-30 second cool-down time when you’ll stir the wax up.
Beeswax melts at approximately 145° which is very easy to achieve with a microwave and if you overdo it, you’ll lose most of your beeswax to the sides of your microwave.
The same is true if you don’t stir your beeswax. If you don’t stir for a good 20-30 seconds, the melted wax on the outside gets superheated while the wax in the center remains solid and you’ll lose a lot of it.
Step 2: Straining Wax To Remove Impurities - Video 0​4:0​7
Now that your beeswax is completely melted, you’ll need to grab your plastic container, straining material, and binder clips.
The steps to straining are pretty straight forward:
- Fill your plastic container with about 1/3 cold water
- Put your straining material over the top of the container & clamp the sides down with the binder clips for stability
- Pour your melted wax onto the straining material (the wax will flow through to sit on top of the water)
What Should I Use For a Straining Material?
Your straining material does not need to be anything fancy or expensive. In fact, we recommend finding the cheapest see-through material you can find.
What you’re looking for is any loose weave material (has tiny holes) that you can see though. This is a good example of the type of fabric you should look for:
*Note: Any local fabric store should have something that you can use that meets this criteria.
Step 3: Letting the Wax Harden - Video 0​​5:​1​0
After you have run your beeswax through the loose-weave straining material, simply let it sit until it has hardened completely before removing it from the container (see the video time-lapse at 0​5:​17)
This lets the beeswax cool down and harden into a nice cake (complete with cool designs) that you can easily remove from the container. It will look something like this:
Repeat The Process If Necessary
Your wax may need to be rendered more than once to give it the nice beeswax color you’re looking for. You may need to run this process 1-2 more times to get usable beeswax.
The wax we used for this course required an additional round of the rendering process to get all of the dirt and other debris out.
Wrap-Up
In this course, you’ve discovered how to render your own beeswax at home for $15 or less without the need for any commercial equipment. You’ve also learned what materials you need to have before getting started.
You now have all the information you need to render your own beeswax!
With your newly rendered beeswax, you can use it for hundred of different things. Here are just a few ideas of things you could make or use your beeswax for:
- Lip balm
- Soap
- Boot blather
- Stone countertop seal
- Lotion
- Candles
- Rust prevention
- Furniture polish
Again, these are just a few things you can do with rendered beeswax. We’ll be covering many of these in future courses so stay tuned!
Share Your Thoughts
We’d love to get your feedback so we can make even better courses in the future. Would you be willing to take 2-3 minutes to share your experience with us?
Congratulations on finishing this course and thank you for sharing your time with us!
Bret
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