What if honey crystallizes? Pollen: A natural multivitamin and protein source Pollen truly is a natural superstar among honey bee products. How is pollen harvested? Storing and eating pollen The best way of keeping pollen is by freezing it to keep it as fresh as possible! Bee careful with — achoo! Beeswax: a natural multi-purpose product. How and why do bees produce beeswax? Propolis: a natural antibiotic One of the most amazing and lesser-known hive products is propolis.
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These cookies are only stored if you give your consent. I separate and melt my cappings with an old Maxant I believe out of production capping melter. It produces clean beeswax. The resulting wax is beautifully yellow and fragrant. Why would someone want to filter their wax until is is a colorless white?
They purchase thousands of tons of beeswax and it is processed for candle making. Basically, the wax has to be graded before filtering. Raw beekeeper produced beeswax ranges from light yellow or tan to dark brown. Some types of wax can be made white, and some types are naturally yellow, depending on the type of honey that was used to make the wax by the bees. For example, cotton honey wax came in tan or brown, but would filter out very white.
Eucalyptus or Montana sweet clover, on the other hand, can not be made white by ordinary filtration. It could be bleached white with sulfuric acid, but this is seldom done, since it destroys the odor and makes it gummy.
The impurities such as pollen and propolis do contribute to the color of wax, but some waxes are naturally yellow or brown colored. Why white? Well, the Knorrs make 30 some different colors of pure beeswax candles, including ivory.
For certain colors, such as blue, the wax must be nearly white. Other colors that have a yellow cast, such as brown or orange, or very dark ones like purple or black can be made with yellow wax. Once melted, it was pumped into an agitator tank and various powders were added, including charcoal, clay, and diatomaceous earth. This was agitated and then pumped through a filter press for some time.
In a filter press, the powders are trapped between a series of aluminum plates and the wax must pass through filter paper. Once it has gone through this process long enough, it would be pumped into a holding tank. If hot wax is held over a flame for a long time, it will darken as well.
By the way, they also made foundation, which is what I did there. Most of the yellow cast wax was made into foundation, and the very white was saved for the candles that were to be colored or sold white. The sorting of the raw wax was a fine art that Henry Knorr had learned over the course of his life. He was a machinist by trade and built most of the equipment used in the manufacture of his candles and foundation.
I agree that there is nothing more beautiful than a bright yellow candle, but there is a market for colored candles as well. You must be logged in to post a comment. Author Recent Posts. Spencer Murphy. Latest posts by Spencer Murphy see all. Post navigation Previous Previous post: What about indigestion?
Being a beekeeper, there was always a lot of extra wax left over after harvesting the honey as every 60 pounds of honey creates one pound of wax. Drawing on his background as a tool and die maker, Fred built the candle factory machines, using the same pattern he used for his honeycomb foundation used in the hives.
Fred made several different styles of candles and experimented with colors — one of his first customers was The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe.
During that time, Henry was working in a machine shop in San Diego and would come on weekends to help. When his father got busier, he asked Henry to work in the business alongside him. She got jealous and asked Fred to sell the business, which he did to Henry in the s. As a machinist, one of the first things Henry did when he took over was add another machine and built a total of four.
Of his siblings, Henry was the one to carry on the family business. His three older siblings have passed away but his brother who is four years younger than him lives in Arizona and Henry talks to him almost every day.
When Henry took over, Knorr was using 50, pounds of beeswax. By the time Henry passed the business on to his son, Steven, in , they were using , to , pounds of beeswax in candles.
Steven passed away in and his daughter, Nancy, took over, with aims to ensure Knorr continues to flourish.
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