Stainless steel wax melter for 15 Dadant or 20 Langstroth frames

01 · HOW IT MELTS

The steam rises, the flame does not reach

You fill the lower compartment with water and heat it from outside. Steam and heat rise to the frames and melt the wax without the flame ever touching it, which is the difference between recovering wax and burning it.

While there is water, the whole thing cannot pass 100 °C. Even so, turn the flame down once it is running: sustained above about 85 °C the wax darkens and loses its scent, and from there you only gain colour.

The lapse that does cost money is running out of water. If the compartment dries out, the wax starts heating against the steel. Check the level and top up with hot water, never cold onto a red-hot bottom.

02 · WHY 15 AND NOT 20

Frame height decides it, not volume

The tank has 49.5 cm of usable height, and that is the whole explanation. A Langstroth frame is 23 cm, the same as Zander and DN: two layers fit inside and you get about twenty.

A Dadant brood frame is 28.5 cm. Two will not fit, so it stays at a single batch of fifteen. It is not a capacity limit: it is arithmetic.

03 · THE SECOND LIFE

With the plugs in, it is a tub

Because the circuits are independent, closing the taps with the three plugs included turns the body into a washing tub: fill it with hot water and soak frames or hive bodies to clean them.

It is the same tank doing the other end-of-season job, with nothing else to buy.

04 · THE HEAT COMES FROM OUTSIDE

Gas burner or wood-fired oven

There is no element inside: it needs an external heat source, a gas burner or the wood oven made to sit under this model. With wood you work without electricity and without a bottle, which is exactly what sheds off the grid are after.

If you go with gas, one seasonal note: wax is mostly rendered in winter and butane loses pressure below about 5 °C. Propane copes with the cold. And either way, outdoors or somewhere very well ventilated.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is half the equipment: the other half is the heat source, and that is worth deciding first.