> Do you render your wax in a solar melter?

Yes, exclusively.

> Do you use anything to clean it? Peroxide?

Heaven forfend!  Peroxide is pure added cost, and does not perform as well
as the free (and organic-biodynamic-buzzword compliant) services of the sun.

Repeated cycling of the same wax through the same solar wax melter is my
only trick.
After each pass, whatever crud settles to the bottom of the wax is cut off.
That "dirty" wax removed from the cakes can be melted electrically and
mechanically filtered through coffee filters, and makes good wax for use by
woodworkers,  but is not worth trying to salvage and process into candle or
cosmetic wax.

After a few passes, one has nice clean bright yellow wax.

To make "white" wax, and it is best to run a batch through the melter that
is small enough to make a thin (1/16th to 1/8th inch thick) layer in the
catch pan.  Once one has a "thin slab", it can be sun-bleached outside the
melter to get the white color that is desired in lip balms and some other
cosmetics applications.

None of the above is "advanced" in the least.  The scaling up of the process
to "commercial size" involves the use of large, sliding-glass door sized
melters, with the glazing being DuPont Tefzel, a saran-wrap-like plastic
from the 1970s that remains clear through decades of exposure, and even
survives hits from rocks and branches well.  (I glazed entire greenhouses
with the stuff, and they are all still totally transparent and intact
several decades later).  For a big wax melter, you'll need serious
insulation, and you likely want to think about making it an in-ground unit
for late fall use. 

My current unit is tiny, but I now keep a tiny fraction of the number of
hives I used to run.
Build one, don't buy - even the "worst" design/implementation will work
adequately, as you really don't want any temperature over 200F or so.  At
250, wax starts to smoke, so no parabolic dish designs, please!  :)

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html