Which comb for wax?

[Pete]

We ahve had a lot of comb round lately, doing feral remomvals etc and ended up with a big pile of comb from a hive that totally collapsed. Brood chilled dead/squashed in the comb.

Can you easily use all of the comb for melting into wax or only burr or only honey combs and cappings?

If you can use brood comb, how, just melt and filter it like normal?

[AllenF]

You can use all wax.   Just have to filter it out, but it is all good.

[tillie]

If it's dark brood wax, it helps to filter it several times.  Cindy Bee did a presentation at Young Harris, putting the old brood comb and some old comb ruined by SHB into a flannel pillow case and putting that into a Turkey Fryer of boiling water.  She then filtered the wax out so that the yuck was left in the pillow case (has to be all cotton, preferably old flannel).

I did that with some old brood comb and old ruined by SHB honeycomb.  After I got the brown wax disc out of the huge pot I had originally filtered it in, I then broke the disk up and put it in my solar wax melter.  After the solar wax filtering (through a paper towel), the resulting wax was canary yellow and gorgeous....didn't have the honey smell of cappings wax but the color was amazing. 

Linda T in Atlanta

[Kathyp]

i like the pillow case/turkey fryer idea.  i usually do it over a double boiler and through a couple of folds of cheese cloth.  works well, but you really have to watch it so that it doesn't get to hot and boil over. 

[AllenF]

i like the pillow case/turkey fryer idea.  i usually do it over a double boiler and through a couple of folds of cheese cloth.  works well, but you really have to watch it so that it doesn't get to hot and boil over. 

But won't that make my turkey taste funny?       :-D

[Robo]

I have been using 5 gallon paint strainers for old/dark comb.   I have a metal garbage can that I hang the strainer bag in. The can has a hole in it to accept the end of a steam cleaner.  I run the steam cleaner through one tank of water, which is usually enough for a bag of comb.  If I'm using wax blocks it takes more than one cycle.   I usually let it sit over night ant the next day pop the disk of wax out of the bottom of the can.  The water/dirt is left in the bottom of the can, so the ax disk comes out pretty easy.

I just picked up some of the new wax strainers from Betterbee, but haven't tried them yet.   The claim they can easily be cleaned, so that will cut down on buying paint strainers (hopefully).