Bees Wax

Gotta love having a master Scrounger for a hubby, not to mention one who LOVES to get out and talk to people!

Since he is the people person of the family, I always tell him if I'm on the look out for anything in particular...like bees wax for my herbal salve.

Since I prefer to have beeswax from as local a source as possible I've been having him ask the local bee keepers the past 2-3 years if they have any extra I can buy or just HAVE. I'm even willing to figure out how to clean it myself if need be just to get some.  Thankfully, the past couple years we've managed to get a little bit from the man we buy honey from, that I didn't NEED to clean.

The BEST part about it was it was free!!

This chunk here is pie size...it looks like they poured the cleaned/melted beeswax into a pie tin to harden in fact.  On a side note, I just LOVE the smell of bees wax, it still has some of that sweet honey smell left in it.

One day, if I'm lucky, I'll get enough to make some candles with it, but for now, I'm just thrilled to have plenty to keep making my herbal salve that's become quite popular with our neighbors!  Going to have to start charging them something for it, if this keeps up, cause the olive oil I use isn't cheap, not to mention some of the herbs.  LOL  It's nice to have something to give them when they help us out though, so not having to BUY some of what goes into it will help keep the cost down at least!

Now to get it grated up, so I can use it.  I have to freeze it, so it grates a little easier...not that it's EASY, but it's easier than if it weren't frozen.  It took me a little while to figure out how to get it so I could weigh out what I could use...hacking pieces off was next to impossible...and grating it didn't work to well either, till I found somewhere online that said to freeze it first.  Boy was I thankful to find that idea!

Anyway, now I should have enough beeswax for a while longer!  Yippee!! :-))