We have a lot of beeswax left from our bee keeping days, and my husband has been making candles with the wax. He makes 8" and 12" candles. For the past two days he has been out in the workshop making candles. Here is his set-up, with a hot plate to melt the wax, a filter to remove any impurities (like dead bees), and the silicone molds. This is what we end up with, and when snuffed, they smell divine!
You get top marks for those. When I was a child, my parents and I made candles usually at Christmas. The way we did it was to pour melted wax over chunks of picked ice which were loaded into one of those waxed cardboard quart milk cartons. The ice would melt and there would be interesting-looking cavities that were especially nice to see as the candle burnt. My parents would somehow dye the wax red or green. Also my mom would make things to attach to the candle like “snow” or “holly leaves” and “berries”. They would also sprinkle some silver glitter on them as well. Jane do you have a way of using food colouring or something to colour your wax? If you find the wax colour unattractive, you can expose the wax to sunshine and it will turn pure white. Great posting. It brought back memories. Thanks for this.
Sjoerd, we are glad your childhood memories came back, and were so pleasant. We like the beige color of the wax. That way we can tell them from tallow candles, which we have for emergencies. We keep a stash of emergency tallow candles for neighbors who think the power won't go out!
That is a great use for them. My beekeeping colleagues make and sell them over here at various bee expositions.
Ah, @marlingardener I love your set-up! Those candles look very nice. I could easily buy a dozen or two of those. Yes, neighbours that think we'll never get power outages... That is rather annoying, isn't it? Thanks @Sjoerd for sharing your childhood memories. I went all pink and fuzzy inside.
Ahhhh. Cheers Droopy. You’re as sweet as snegle, or is that snegler. I can’t recall if you have those sweets there.
Ahem... *tut-tuts in English* A "snegle" is a slug. I don't find them very sweet, but I will consider the fact that you don't speak Norwegian and that you may have something called a snegle or snegler that's sweet in Dutch.
Droopy, you are definitely not a slug! I have no idea what a snegler is, but English has its pitfalls also. Here in Texas "well, bless your heart" is not nearly as nice as it sounds. It's a southern lady's way of swearing at you!
Oh, my... I would have fallen into that trap since here in Norway it's a nice thing to tell somebody.
Zigs, I will not show that to my husband. He has enough ideas of his own without trying to make a cactus candle! Nice prize, though.
Here in the heat of the Southeast many waxes like beeswax just sag or even melt into the heat of summer. The microcrystalline waxes have the highest melting point I have learned about, I guess somewhere around 175f for most of them. I use them on hats and tarps. Are these type waxes also useable in candles?
