In this instructional video, the presenter explains why attempting to render old black comb to recover beeswax is generally not worthwhile. Drawing on personal experience, he argues that the amount of usable wax recovered from such frames is negligible compared to the energy, time, and cost involved, especially given current fuel prices. He demonstrates a workflow: cut out the old comb, clean the frames in a soda‑solution, and reuse them with fresh foundation. For the discarded comb, he treats it as potentially diseased, separating “good” and “bad” wax, but ultimately recommends not rendering it at all. Instead, he suggests breaking the comb into small pieces and using it as firelighters, or burning it in a pit to sterilise it, thereby eliminating disease risk. The video includes a visual inspection of about 100 frames, showing that most of the material is swollen cocoons with little wax, reinforcing his claim that buying fresh wax is more efficient. The overall message is a cost‑effective, disease‑safe approach to managing old comb: reuse frames, discard or burn the rest, and use the waste as firelighters.
Chapters
If you're thinking of rendering down some frames like this to get at the beeswax, then this video is going to save you loads of time. Now, I'm not going to show you how to render down these frames to recover the beeswax. What I'm going to tell you is do not bother. This might look like a frame of beeswax, but the amount of usable beeswax in this frame is negligible. How do I know? I've been through it all before. I've cut everything out, I've rendered it down, I try and get the beeswax out, and there is just not enough to make it worthwhile. Especially in today's age of expensive oil prices and expensive hard solid fuel as well, it is Just not worth the effort. So when you come to replace this wax, you just chop it out like that, and then the frames can go through a soda solution and they come out perfectly clean like that. And then once they come out clean, you can go and put your foundation back in them and reuse them again. So I always keep my frames, I always reuse my frames, because once you get them to that point, they're very, very easy to clean and reuse. But what do I do with this wax here now? And you're probably thinking, what is that big mound of stuff in front of you? If you take hundreds of these, and I literally mean hundreds, and you break them all up and you put them into water and put them in the sack and melt it and drain everything out, you will get some beeswax. You'll get little bits like that, and it'll probably be a centimeter on the top of the container that you're using. And then underneath it, you'll just get all of these old swollen cocoons. That is what makes up the vast majority of the stuff here. And it's completely pointless trying to render it out because you can get beeswax elsewhere. It's a much easier job. And in some instances, it's probably just better to go and buy it anyway. So what do you do with this wax here? Now this wax here is potentially diseased wax. I treat all failed colonies as if they're diseased and I render down all of the wax at the end of the year. All of the good stuff goes in the good pot, all of the bad stuff goes in the bad pot. I render out what I can and I burn the rest. But if you've just got lots and lots of old frames like this, my recommendation to you is to not render it down at all. Cut it out, break it up into little bits like that, and that makes a perfect firelighter for your fire. Keep it somewhere safe, obviously it's still going to be a disease risk, but it is perfect firelighters for your fire. Just break it up into little bits like that, and I'll show you just how well they take at the end of the video. But let's take a close look inside some of this mess here. So all of this was about 100 frames that I rendered down to do a video to show how useless it was. And this is what is left. There is no wax in any of these cocoons at all. There is a bit of a lump in the middle here. You can see there is wax holding this together. I could refine this wax if I wanted to. I could go and break all of this back up again, heat it up with some water, try and get as much of that wax as I possibly can. But I know from my own experience that the amount of energy that you need to put in to melt this wax out and get it out at the other end is probably going to be more than the cost of just going and buying the wax by itself. Now, if I had tons and tons of this, I'd probably do something differently and try and get some recovery out of it. But for me, all this is here is a massive disease risk. So I'm not going to render it down. I'm not going to try and reclaim any of that wax. All I'm going to do is dig a massive pit, get some good fire going inside it, chuck it in, let it all burn off completely sterilized, fill the pit back in again. And then that's another year's worth of old manky comb in the ground safe and sound. And I can start again with my fresh frames full of brand new foundation ready for the bees. So I said halfway through that these are good as fire lighters and they really are. They probably save you quite a bit of money as fire lighters. All you do, get them going. So there we go. You can see you get that in your fire, get it lit, and it will get pretty much any fire going. They really do make some of the very best firelighters going. Rendering down black old beeswax frames really isn't a smart move. Get them in your log burner instead. They make the very best firelighter and it will save you tons of time.
