SolarOVen Unique Applications - Melting Beeswax capping and candle making

by Cheryl Jensen
(Mesquite, NV 89027)

Solar Oven/Cooker Unique Applications/Uses

Melting Beeswax cappings from honeycomb and making candles

We had great success melting the cappings from the honey frames. I am a beekeeper and when we extract honey, the capping contain a lot of honey as well as beeswax. In the past we have just melted it on the stove and let it cool, lifting the wax off the honey. We used to give the wax back to the bees to eat. The honey became very thick since it was heated and not as good as that taken from the frames.
First, we let the cappings drain through some fine netting and then the cappings were placed in a bowl in the Solar Oven until melted which took about and half an hour.
We let the beeswax cool. We had 1 lb. of beeswax. The next day we turned the bowl over and the cake of wax fell out.
The next step was to rinse any honey residue off the bottom of the "cake" of wax and cut it in chunks to melt in the Solar Oven. It didn't take long to melt the beeswax. it was about 15-20 min. We poured it into molds and a glass candle jar. We used an aluminum can as a mold cutting the top out of the can, punching a hole in the bottom of the can to thread the wick through. We taped the wick to the bottom on the can and tied the top of the wick to a pencil laid over the top opening of the can. The beeswax was poured into the can and we let it cool until the next day. We peeled the aluminum can off the wax and there was our beeswax candle! We inverted the candle because the bottom of the can makes a nice design for the top of the candle. We left some of the beeswax its natural color of yellow. We put some candle coloring in the other pound of wax.

The Solar Oven can be used to melt paraffin also. There is no danger of fire and smoking wax by using the solar oven. It is also free energy. We have made melted paraffin on the stove and were always afraid of smoking wax. There was much less mess using the Solar Oven to make candles.










Ken & Cheryl Jensen



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Thank you Ken and Cheryl,

This is an excellent example of using the power of the sun for many different kinds of useful applications.
I had heard of this before from others, but had not seen the results.
Solar Cooking is one of many useful applications of the solar oven/cooker.

Thanks again,
Nathan Admin.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------