Cleaning Wax

Cleaning wax is not my favorite thing. I get a lot of wax through the honey harvesting process, not to mention knocking out any burr comb. Usually I leave it honey soaked until I am ready to melt it down. This time I tried washing my wax straight away. I filled up my uncapping tub with water and sloshed around the wax until it was clean.

I strained out the water using my coarse filter, it looks pretty nice:

This will be a lot easier to melt down and filter to make some nice candles later :)

The bees were VERY curious what I was up to while I was doing this. It was really hard to clean my honey soaked equipment out in the front yard like I usually do. Last year, I harvested honey around the same time and everything worked out fine. This year there must be a lot less in bloom because I got mobbed by bees as I was cleaning. Towards the end, I even had to put on my bee suit. The bees are typically very calm and I'm not as cautious while cleaning, but when there is very little nectar, the bees tend to get grouchy and protective. Better safe than stung.