Production line

[Joan Houston]

Prepping for vendor fairs nearly every weekend starting tomorrow thru end of December. Balms Wednesday, candlemakering yesterday and today.

[Robert L Mathews]

On Nov 21, 2025, at 11:38 AM, Joan Houston <bee...@dripzhoney.com> wrote:

Prepping for vendor fairs nearly every weekend starting tomorrow thru end of December. Balms Wednesday, candlemakering yesterday and today.

Neat! Is it all your own wax? I made candles one year but used up all my spare wax just to make enough for gifts.

(I used the very excellent club candle mold kit, free-to-borrow for members, which Dan Wood maintains. It was fun.)

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Robert L Mathews

[Robin Chatham]

Wow! Is that pot with a spigot melted wax?

Robin Chatham

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[Joan Houston]

I’ve got boxes of filtered beeswax, and buckets of rendered wax that needs to be filtered. I make some before every event and take orders if I run out. I usually go through a box or two per season and use a silicone muffin pan to melt pucks into a manageable size. I agree the club kit is awesome; Liz, Paula and I used it last year. I pick up a mold whenever I see them on sale. Doesn’t happen often. Then I write all the info from the label on the mold with a Sharpie - item#, wick size, amount of wax per candle in oz/lb, etc. My daughter does all the bottling & labeling, and Jake uncaps the honey supers and spins it out. I’ve got all the stuff, business write off. They set up the table & tents, and all I have to do anymore is talk about bees, which is about all I have the energy for a lot of the time. :)

[Joan Houston]

Yeah, I got it on Amazon. Works great; has a setting for beeswax.

[Robert L Mathews]

On Nov 21, 2025, at 12:50 PM, Joan Houston <bee...@dripzhoney.com> wrote:

Yeah, I got it on Amazon. Works great; has a setting for beeswax.

Huh! I didn't know these things so cheap (although I guess that's true of most things that have electronics in them nowadays).

For others interested, I found Joan's 10 pound one for $100, and a smaller 8 pound version for $60.

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Robert L Mathews

[andrew....@comcast.net]

We should add one of these melters to the club's candle kit!

- A - 

[Robert L Mathews]

On Nov 23, 2025, at 1:37 AM, 'andrew....@comcast.net' via The Alameda County Beekeepers Association <the-alameda-county-b...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

We should add one of these melters to the club's candle kit!

If Dan wants to suggest that, I'm sure it would be approved -- but it would be another thing he would have to maintain, so I'll leave that up to him.

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Robert L Mathews

[Dan Wood]

Verrrrry interrrrresting … I’m game to try it out!

The taller model with the spout up high seems like a good plan; some videos I watched mentioned how it’s kind of dangerous and annoying to have to place the heater up on some kind of pedestal.

I found that we could get the 10# model on sale directly from the maker, which is cheaper and doesn’t give Jeff Bezos any money, which makes me happy!   Looks like $104.50 currently; hopefully their “black friday” sale lasts a few days….

I would also think we should get a pouring pitcher of the right size to match the height of the spigot. I don’t know what that size will be, but it looks like that would add another $15-$25 to the total.

My only concern is keeping this thing clean from person to person, but I think with the bottom drain, it should be pretty easy to empty and clean it out.

So … ACBA board [CC’d here], do you approve this expenditure?

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[Joan Houston]

The trick is to drain ALL the beeswax out of the tank so it doesn’t solidify in there. I open the valve and let it empty out into a silicone muffin pan while the unit is still on. Sometimes there are inclusions in the dregs that have to be refiltered anyway.

Pretty sure it would be nearly impossible to unclog cold wax. I have to take a hairdryer to the valve on my heated honey tank if I get lazy and leave honey in there to crystallize.