How To: Solar Beeswax Melter

Most of you know that hubby is also a beekeeper. In addition to harvesting the lovely honey, we also get beeswax. Since we’ll be using the beeswax this winter for lip balms and other fun stuff it needs to be filtered. And an easy way to do that is with a handmade solar beeswax melter.

It’s real simple. Here are the supplies you need:

• Styrofoam cooler
• Black spray paint to paint the outside of the cooler
• Aluminum foil to line the inside bottom of the cooler
• Plastic container that fits easily into the bottom of the cooler
• Water
• Paper towels
• Rubber bands
• Piece of glass to serve as cover (I used a piece of glass from an old picture frame)
• Duck tape

So let’s get started on making this solar beeswax melter. Spray paint the outside of the cooler. While it’s drying, cover the edges of the glass with duck tape.

Place aluminum foil on the inside bottom of the cooler. You can line the whole cooler with foil if you want to, but it works fine with just the bottom lined.

Now to get the beeswax ready for the melter. Once the honey is removed from the beeswax (we use the crush and strain technique), it’s time to rinse the beeswax. I lay out the beeswax to dry on paper towels.

I let the beeswax dry for a day and then it’s time to put in the solar beeswax melter.

First, add water to the bottom of the plastic container. Cover the top of the container with paper towels and secure them with rubber bands.

With your hands, form the beeswax into balls and place on top of the paper towels.

Carefully, place this container at the bottom of the painted cooler.

Cover the top of the cooler with the glass.

Here is a closeup of the beeswax in the solar beeswax melter. This was taken with three balls of beeswax from our second harvest this summer.

Now to let the sun do its job! Once it is completely melted, all will be left on the paper towels is the impurities and a little wax. These paper towels make great fire starters.

Remove the paper towels to see the beautiful beeswax that has melted into the container below.

It is so beautiful. It’s easy to pop the beeswax out of the container since there is a bit of water still on the bottom under the wax. And then you have this slab of beeswax.

When I’m ready to make something with the beeswax, I’ll just cut off a piece. Some beekeepers will remelt it into blocks for sale. Since we are using this for ourselves we don’t need to do this.

It’s so much fun making stuff that works! Looking forward to using this wonderful fragrant beeswax.

Now a question for you – Any ideas on other uses for this beeswax melter?