Campbell's Honey

Beeswax is a natural secretion of honeybees in the hive,  for the purpose of building honeycomb.

As with all things in life, there is a cost involved. One pound of beeswax as produced in the hive, takes eight pounds of honey to manufacture. Young bees make wax by eating large amounts of honey, and then extruding fresh beeswax from pores in their stomach. Without this construction material, the colony would have no place to store their honey.

Before we extract the honey from the comb,  the wooden frames must first go through the uncapping machine to cut off the wax cappings.

Wax cappings are to  honeycomb, as lids are to jars. As the wax cappings are cut from the honeycomb, they drop into an auger below the tray, and are pushed (along with  a small amount of honey) into  the wax spinner where the honey is separated from the wax by a large centrifuge. After several hours of operation the spinner is unloaded , and the dry wax is stored in metal drums until time to render the wax.

At rendering time we wheel the drums filled with dry wax cappings into the boiler-room where we have a large tank partially filled with steam-heated water. The drums of wax cappings are dumped, and shovelled into the hot water where they are melted into a liquid and boiled for about 2 hours. The wax is clarified by boiling, and the impurities, which are called "slumgum,"  settle to the bottom. The wax is then skimmed off and molded in plastic trays and small pails.

One barrel of dry wax cappings will make a hundred pounds of solid wax blocks. There's always a demand for clean bright blocks of molded beeswax. This year we have already sold our beeswax, even before it is entirely rendered.