Bees Wax

The other day I decided to mind my own bees wax.
This summer, the day I was stung, I had been harvesting the crooked combs in hive #1. I was on a mission to encourage the bees to build on my newly designed bar and therefore have straight comb.
Because that day ended in the hospital I hadn't really thought about the few combs of wax sitting in a pot in the corner of the out building.
But when I was tidying up the other day I decided to process it.
To my surprise there was a wax moth on the top comb.

I had only read about these and had never seen one.
Yuck.
I decided to boil the whole business and see what I got.

My bee friend has a great post about how to process bees wax so I won't try to do better than her. I will just show you a little of my process and if you are interested in doing it yourself check out Holly's post.
I was really surprised at how much pollen had been in the combs and felt a little sad about ruining something that took so many bees a lifetime to gather, but there was no going back now.
As I filtered out the stuff, surprise...

One very nasty boiled grub.
Most of all I was surprised at the bright yellow of the wax, tinted by all that pollen.
Not a lot of wax from all those combs, but plenty to make lip balm for Christmas presents.