Oliver Radcliffe
Why Cappings Are Worth Melting Down
Every extraction leaves you with a bowl of sticky cappings — the pale wax sliced from the comb before the honey is spun out. They look like waste, but they are the cleanest and most fragrant wax your hives will produce. Cappings carry far less propolis and fewer scraps of brood comb than old brace comb, so they filter down to a lovely honey-coloured block that still smells faintly of the hive. Set aside a kilo or so and you have enough for a winter's candles and a year of furniture polish.
Keep them in a lidded bucket until you have a decent batch. Any honey still clinging to the wax will drain away if you tip the cappings into a sieve set over a bowl and leave them for a day or two. That honey is perfectly good to eat, or to feed back to a colony in a lean spring. What's left is ready to melt.
Melting And Cleaning The Wax
Beeswax is not difficult to work with, but it is unforgiving of carelessness. It scorches, discolours and will eventually catch fire if it gets too hot or sits on a direct ring. Always use a bain-marie or a dedicated wax melter, never a pan straight on the hob, and never wander off and leave a melting pan unattended. Keep a lid close by to smother the pan in an emergency, and never throw water on burning wax.
- A large saucepan of simmering water with an old metal jug or bowl sitting in it.
- A jam thermometer clipped to the jug, keeping the wax between 70°C and 85°C while it melts.
- A jelly bag, muslin square or clean fine cloth stretched over a bucket to strain through.
Melt the cappings gently, then pour the liquid wax through the cloth. Strain a second time through finer material if you want candle-grade clarity. Dark, propolis-rich wax is better kept back for polish, where its colour hardly matters. A useful trick is to leave an inch of water in the melting jug: debris sinks, clean wax floats, and once cold you can lift off a neat disc of wax and tip the dirty water away.
Candles: Moulds, Wicks And Pouring
Beeswax is more viscous than paraffin, so choose a wick one size larger than you would for the same diameter. For a pillar of around 5cm across, a square-braid cotton wick works well; tealights in small cups want something finer. Prime your wicks by dipping them in melted wax and laying them straight to set — they will burn more evenly and are far easier to thread.
Silicone moulds need no release agent, but rigid metal or plastic ones benefit from a light wipe of cooking oil. Thread the primed wick through the mould, seal the base with a dab of softened wax or a little putty, and hold the top end centrally with a split cane or a clothes peg laid across the rim.
- Pour slowly down the inside of the mould at around 68–72°C to avoid dragging in air bubbles.
- Keep a little wax back, then top up the sunken crater at the wick as the candle cools — you may need two top-ups.
- Cool slowly at room temperature, away from draughts, ideally overnight. Rushing it causes cracks and shrinkage.
- Release silicone moulds by flexing; for rigid ones, chill in the fridge for twenty minutes or dip briefly in cold water.
Trim the finished wick to about a centimetre and let the first burn run long enough to form a full melt pool. If you are short of time, rolling candles from beeswax foundation sheets takes minutes and needs no melting at all.
Furniture Polish From The Same Pan
The same clean wax makes a superb nourishing polish. The classic blend is one part beeswax to three or four parts oil by weight: roughly 25g of wax to 100ml of oil gives a soft cream, while 50g to 100ml gives a firmer balm for hard-wearing surfaces.
For the oil, choose something that will not go tacky — jojoba, sweet almond or a light olive oil all work nicely. Avoid raw linseed and pure tung oil, which set hard and are meant for bare timber rather than finished furniture. Melt the wax in the bain-marie, stir in the oil until fully combined, then take it off the heat and add ten to twenty drops of essential oil per 100ml if you fancy a scent: lavender, sweet orange, cedarwood and rosemary all blend beautifully with the honeyed smell of wax. Pour into a wide-necked jar and let it set.
Applying And Storing Your Polish
Rub a thin film over the wood with a lint-free cloth, leave it ten to twenty minutes, then buff with a second clean cloth, working along the grain. A little goes a long way, and thin coats build a soft sheen rather than a smear. Always test on an unseen patch first, particularly on French-polished antiques, painted surfaces, stone or unsealed softwood.
Because the wax and oil separate over time, stir or shake before each use. Store the jar in a cool, dark cupboard with the lid firm — beeswax keeps for years, and a batch made this winter will still be doing good service next autumn.
Marks, Safety And Practical Detail
Work on newspaper or a silicone mat, because wax drips are tedious to remove from worktops and impossible from fabric. Wipe tools and jugs with kitchen paper while they are still warm; once set, wax is stubborn. Spread any oily polishing rags out flat to dry before binning them rather than screwing them into a ball, as they can generate heat as they cure.
Label your jars and candles with the date and the wax source. It is surprisingly useful to know which hive produced the batch that burned best, or which blend you preferred on the kitchen table — and it turns a pleasant afternoon's work into something you can repeat, season after season.
