I’m a new-bee, only a month in, and burr comb was not something I knew about until my first inspection. I read to not leave it laying around and to collect it. So after (2) inspections of my (2) hives I decided I had enough wax to try and render it. It was a fun little project. @Dawn_SD , I know you told me to freeze it as rendering might be too much hassle, but I was planning on rendering it anyway… my wife wants to make some lip balm. But maybe not with this first batch, I will use it on the flow frames once the time comes.
I put the dirty wax in some pantyhose and tied it off into a small little package. The pantyhose mesh is fine enough to let melted wax through, but not the dirty debris. I didn’t want wax on any of our kitchen pots and pans, so I took a stock pot filled with water and an old pickle jar* (I wanted a metal can but we didn’t have one used recently) laying down in the water so that the water in the pot and jar are one and the same and started heating up the water. Once it was near temperature (~145 degrees [Fahrenheit for my non-US friends] is when wax starts to melt), I tilted the jar upright so that the water in the jar and the water in the pot are now separated by the jar. I placed the wax package in the jar and tried putting a rock on it so that the pantyhose package stayed at the bottom, but my rock was too small and the wax came floating to the top. So, I had to make an impromptu anti-floating device which consisted of a kabob skewer and vice grips. I never let the water get to boiling so that the wax wasn’t bubbling out. I kept the water level near the top of the jar so that when the wax displaced the water, the wax wouldn’t go below the straight wall sides of the top of the jar (again, a can would have eliminated this concern) else the wax would flare out as the jar got wider and I would have had a hard time removing the wax in a puck. This also kept me from rendering the whole amount of wax because it was at that bottom point, so I cut the heat. Once it cooled, I popped the wax out and threw away the jar. Next rendering batch, I will reuse the current pantyhose package to get the rest of the wax out of it.
*If you are using an old jar, be careful because many jars aren’t made for heating. I made sure to try and keep the outside water and inside water close in temperature so the jar wouldn’t explode.