Most recipes will start you ‘grating’ your beeswax which is horrible – if one day your are feeling particularly smug or happy – grating a bit of beeswax should set you straight again. It’s also the best way I know to destroy every cheese-grater known to man not to mention fingernails and knuckles. The sharper the grater the more dangerous it becomes and fingernails and strips of skin do not add to the aesthetics of your wraps.

Also, many recipes use pine resin or ‘rosin’. This is a by-product of turpentine production and, apparently it gives the  wraps a slightly tacky feel so they will stick together when you parcel up your sandwiches or whatever. Unfortunately you’re unlikely to find rosin in the supermarket.  If you are a musician, you might have some or know where to find some – my Uncle used to apply it to his violin bow – I suppose the tackiness makes for a more satisfying screech.

But rosin is not essential – there are alternatives such as hairy string or rubber bands – which are widely available. Hairy string has rustic charm and makes for a very attractive parcel. Another alternative is to employ the ancient art of origami and fold your beeswax wraps into a novelty lunch box. A second one, slightly larger, can be used as a lid.

Time
About an hour

Materials
An old baking sheet
Tin foil
100% cotton cloth
Unwired beeswax foundation
Sunflower oil
A piece of string. Don’t ask how long.

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 100 degrees C;
2. Cover an old baking tray with tin foil – it needs to cover the base and go up over the sides with no holes or tears.
3. Tie up a length of string like a clothesline somewhere handy;
4. Cut some squares of cotton cloth – use pinking shears if possible to prevent fraying.  At about 10″x10″, my squares were a bit on the small side but there was just enough wax mixture for the 6. The size you use is up to you but they do need to be slightly smaller than the baking tray and the bigger they are of course, the more wax they will use;
5. Weigh 50 grams of unwired beeswax foundation and arrange it on the baking tray;
6. Sprinkle over 10 grams of sunflower oil;
7. Place the tray in the oven for 5 minutes or until wax has melted;
8. Take out the tray.  Give it a bit of a swirl to make sure the oil and wax are mixed then add your first cloth square;
9. Put the tray back into the oven for a couple of minutes;
10. Remove the tray and lay your second cloth square on top of the first – if there is space around the edges – off-set it slightly – aim to cover the whole baking sheet so the cotton can wick the wax out of the corners.
11. Then get hold of both squares together by one edge and turn them over so the fresh one is on the bottom. It shouldn’t be hot enought to burn you unless your oven thermostat is malfunctioning or you are a total wimp but be a bit careful about splattering wax everywhere.
12. Repeat steps 9 and 10 until all your squares are in the tin.
13. You will know when to stop because the wax will have been all used up and your last square will take time to get impregnated;
14. Remove the cloth squares one by one, hold aloft and gently waft for a few seconds then drape them over the string to set – it’ll only take a few minutes. If they start to stick together in the tin put it back in the oven for a bit.

Click here for how to render beeswax

Click here for more about beeswax

Click here for more recipes

Click here for how to fill your teeth with beeswax

Click here for more about pine resin or ‘rosin’

Copyright © Beespoke.info 2021.  All Rights Reserved.

The four quarter days are:

• Lady day or the Feast of the Annunciation 25th March;
• Midsummer’s day around 25th June;
• Michaelmas 29th September;
• Christmas 25th December – lest we forget. Fat chance.

They all approximately coincide with either an equinox or a solstice.

Equinoxes

An equinox is when day and night are of equal duration. There are two of them – spring and autumn:

• Spring equinox 21st March;
• Autumn equinox 23rd September.

Solstices

As for the solstices there are two of these too – summer and winter.

• Summer solstice (longest day and shortest night) 21st June;
• Winter solstice (shortest day and longest night) 22nd December.

Christmas

Nobody knows the day or the month when Jesus Christ was actually born. However, the Feast of the Annunciation falls on the 25th March which is when Christians celebrate the day Gabriel called on Mary to tell her she was to be the mother of the son of God.

Imagine that!

Christmas is exactly 9 months after the Feast of the Annunciation. That’s biology for you.

Christmas also coincides approximately with the Winter Solstice on 22nd December. Also known as The Shortest Day. Now there’s cause to celebrate.

Christmas Traditions

You don’t need me to tell you about the ‘traditions’ of Christmas. Suffice to say, it is cruel that we have to bear it in the middle of the darkest, wettest and most depressing time of the year. It’s enough to push you over the edge!

We can never really know what Jesus might think about Christmas traditions, However, we do know what happened when he discovered the merchants had set up shop in the temple, so we can guess:

‘But what about the bees?’ says you…

Us beekeepers are fortunate because there is a lot of stuff out there to be getting on with at christmas.

Treat them

The bees should have been fed and treated for Varroa after the honey was extracted at the end of summer. However, midwinter is the time when the queen bees should be off lay and there should be a short broodless period which is ideal for a backup treatment with Oxalic acid. I say should be because it is not always the case especially in a mild year or where they ivy bloomed late. So long as there has been a bit of cold weather – below 15 degrees – and a decent interval since you last saw yellow ivy pollen going in to the hives – Christmas should be perfect.

Click here for how to do that.

Click here for more about Oxalic acid for Beekeepers.

I should add that midwinter treatment may not be necessary if you are confident that the conditions in autumn were good enough to allow your thymol/MAQS to work properly.

Feed them

While you are out there – check the feed status of your bees. Heft the hives to assess the weight and if they seem light put some fondant on. It won’t do any harm and if they need it later – it’s there.

If the bees seem weak and are clustering close to the top of the frames you could choose to remove the crownboard and place the fondant directly onto the bees where they will find it easily. If you do this – add an eke and pack the space around the fondant with old jumpers, sacking or some other cosy stuff.

Don’t put pollen substitute on yet – too early – wait for February.

Apiary Watch

Make sure the hive roofs are weighted down with stones or tied with ropes – winter has hardly started and there could be gales. And there could be animals.

Maintenance

Mend broken equipment. Treat spare boxes if they need it. Make up new stuff but don’t put wax into new frames till spring or it will just lose its fragrance and go all crispy then the bees won’t work it properly – they’ll draw all that abstract stuff with holes and buttresses.

All your equipment, supers, spare brood boxes etc could all do with a good scrape down – propolis flakes off well in the cold weather.  Save all the little bits of beeswax you will be amazed how it mounts up.

Click here for how to tackle your beeswax mountain.

Strip down old frames with black, knackered or holy wax. Holy wax is comb with holes in it. Burn the really black horrible wax – use if for lighting fires that’s the only thing it’s good for.

Save the paler, cleaner wax and render it:

Click here for how to render beeswax.

Then do something interesting with it but take care not to set fire to yourself:

Click here for beeswax polish recipe

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for candle making

Click here for soap making

Wax Moth

If you are storing used brood frames and you know you have a  wax moth problem you might like to take this opportunity to treat them with acetic acid. Acetic acid is not the stuff you put on your chips – treat it with respect.

Click here for how to do that thing

There is also a biological control agent from Vita which uses a micro-organism to attack wax moth.  The product is called Certan and the micro-organism is called Bacillus thuringiensis.

Click here for Certan information

Christmas Forage

There is very little floral forage out there for the bees at Christmas. This year there is quite a lot of gorse in bloom. In some years there may be the dregs of the ivy. Also some winter garden plants such as Mahonia or even snowdrops.

• Ivy pollen is yellow
• Gorse is orange/brown
• Snowdrops pollen is orange/brown too
• Click here for more about ivy
• Click here for how to take a crop of ivy honey.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2017.  All Rights Reserved.

Click here for more information on the Native Irish Bee.

Here’s how and it isn’t difficult. In fact it’s fun and very rewarding – you will see real results year on year. We used to have some really horrible bees here and only a few hives of them but each year they would chase us round the garden. Now, in the middle of summer I have around 25 hives of bees here and stings are rare.

So make a start this year.

Colony Assessments

First you will need to record aspects of your bees behaviour for an entire season. You will need to record this data because you will not be able to remember it. Click here for a link to a downloadable Colony Assessment record sheet and some instructions.

Colony Appraisals

Once you are armed with a sheaf of these – all filled in from the previous year – you can sit, midwinter, by the fire manipulating your data and transferring it into your Appraisal Sheet. Click here for a link to a downloadable Colony Appraisal sheet and some instructions.This sheet compiles all of your seasonal data from the previous year and tabulates so you can  compare your colonies objectively. Here’s one of my completed Appraisal Sheets for last year (2014). Click it for a better view.

From Data to Action…

How you filter your data to pick out the best colonies to breed from and those to cull is up to you. Here’s what I do – nice and simple:

• Hightlight (yellow) all cells in the ‘cells’ column with an N in other words all the colonies which didn’t make queen cells.
• Then highlight (yellow) the top 10 or so cells of the Docility, Pattern and Total columns.
• You can then pick out the best 30% of your colonies – the ones with 3 or more highlighted cells per row – Pink
• Then the bottom 30-40% of your colonies – the ones with one or less highlighted cells – Blue
• Bring all of your breeder colonies to your breeder apiary
• Take all of the indifferent – neither blue nor pink – colonies to out-apiaries and requeen when your Apideas start to bear fruit;
• Cull all the queens in the blue highlighted colonies but don’t do this until you start to see drone brood. If you cull queens at this time you take advantage of all their brood and bees which you then unite with your breeder colonies. Take care when you do this and make sure to leave them queenless for a week and knock off every single queen cell before you unite over newspaper. Do not look at this as losing colonies of bees because you are not – in a very short while the very strong doubled-up colonies you have created will be ready to split – using the method of your choice and you are back where you started but without those horrible queens.
• Avoid inbreeding by either buying in a few native queens or alternatively take a few of your Apideas to another beekeeper to get mated and/or swap grafting material. Make sure you like his bees, and the cut of his jib, first though!

In addition – you will have favourite queens which may not feature highly in this scheme but there are things about them that you have noticed. If this is the case you should take special care to note where they are (record it on the assessment sheet) and how they do and don’t just cull them because they didn’t score high enough.

Drone Rearing

Have as many bees as possible in your home apiary so there are lots and lots and lots of drones. With luck, the place will be so drone-heavy your virgins will get caught on the way out and won’t go straying with the blithering Buckfast boys. As you know – apiary vicinity mating is a characteristic of the native bee: in this way they manage to get their queens mated in those short flashes of sunshine that occur during otherwise extensive periods of foul weather such as we experienced in the summer of 2012.

Get your drone rearers making drones about 5 weeks before you are due to start your first grafts. Do this by adding in drone frames late March, early April and FEED. In this part of the world it is customary to use two brood frames – each fitted with half a sheet of wax – the bees will draw out drone comb to fill the gap.  If you have frames that have holes in the bottom half but are otherwise good – cut the bottom half out with a stanley knife. Add them at each side of the brood nest – about 3 frames in from each side. If you are on double brood boxes add in two per box.

Some people put two super frames into the brood box and allow the bees to draw drone comb off the bottom bars of these but in my experience the bees don’t seem to know when to stop and attach the combs to the sides of the box which can leave you with a right mess.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Here’s what to do with the feed though:

Get a spare roof…

… and pack the roof cavities with fondant.

Remove the roof from your hungry Apidea…

… and fold back the the little flap in the crownboard.

Quickly put the spare, fondant-packed roof in its place and replace the brick. The bees will access the fondant through the feed hole and eat their way through the galleries and channels in the roof which holds about 150g or 6oz of fondant.

Another alternative might be to remove the crownboard altogether but I haven’t tried that yet and wonder if the fondant might ooze down into the cluster?

Keep an eye on it:

• If the bees are using the fondant you will see water carriers unless it is very cold in which case they will use very little.
• If the weather is mild and the bees are active you might want to check it but give it a couple of weeks and bear in mind – when you lift the roof this time, the crownboard will almost certainly be stuck to it so there will be disturbance. Choose a mild day and be ready to prise it off with your hive-tool. Have a spare crownboard and the other roof at hand – packed with more fondant or Neopoll if we’re into February.
• Neopoll is a pollen supplement with a similar consistency to the fondant but more like marzipan – it’s delicious!
• If it still feels heavy – leave it alone;
• Do not feed syrup in the winter – the bees will not be able to ripen it.

Click here for instructions on How to Overwinter an Apidea

Click here for full Apidea instructions

Click here to listen to Piping Queens

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Bees can be active at quite low temperatures so if you’re a bit on the timid side and your bees are on the feisty side – avail of a veil. But go easy on the smoke.

Storm Damage

You just need to check that the hives have not been demolished by falling trees, that the roofs are still in place and that the bees still have enough stores. Disturb them as little as possible. If you haven’t already done so – rope the hives. This will keep the roofs on and if the hives get toppled by storms or livestock it will help hold them together and give the bees a chance of surviving till your next visit.

Check the Stores

To test they have enough stores quietly take off the roof then put a hand under the floor and gently lift or ‘heft’ from the back just enough to test the weight.

Feeding Fondant

If you think they feel light, carefully take a look under whatever you have covered the feed hole with and if the bees are visible place a cake of fondant over the hole – press it through a bit if you can. If you have Ambrosia or other brand of bee-feed, cut a window in the package and slap it on. If you are using baker’s or homemade fondant, first be sure it only contains sugar and/or honey because sometimes there are additives then cover it with something like an upturned plastic tub or a sheet of polythene/clingfilm or it will dry out.

If you think they might be starving and/or too weak to come up to feed or if they are in a part of the hive away from the feed hole whichever way you turn the crownboard, then you will need to place the fondant directly in contact with the bees. Either:

• Remove the crownboard altogether, put the fondant directly over the bees on the top bars then pack old sacks, or socks or your old pullovers around the fondant inside the roof;
• Or place a lump of fondant over the feed-hole but flatten another piece so it will sit directly on the top bars touching the bees and bridging the beespace under the crownboard to draw them up.

You’d be amazed how quickly bees recover with a bit of feeding.

Don’t give pollen substitute yet – wait till February.

Don’t, whatever you do, feed syrup during the winter months.

Invasions

The other things you should check is that the entrance is still clear and has not been blocked with dead bees. Also check for signs of invasion by animals such as rats, or woodpeckers if you are in England – this will be obvious from the outside – there will be a bloody great hole. This is particularly possible with poly hives or wooden hives in a state of advancing decrepitude.

Mice

Mouse invasion is less obvious but should not happen so long as your entrances are no taller than the average biro. If they are you should have them covered with mouseguards. A mouseguard is a sheet of galvanised with holes punched into it which mice can’t squeeze through. Mice, by the way can uncouple the bones in their skullls and flatten their heads!

Click here for more about wintering bees

Click here for Michaelmas, bees and wintering

Click here for Which Feeder

Click here for how to feed a wintering apidea

Click here for mid-winter feeding of bees

Click here for mid-winter oxalic acid Varroa treatment

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014.  All Rights Reserved.

If the wax is old and very black it is best to strip these frames down and add fresh foundation in the spring – you’ll seldom find AFB in nice clean frames.

Here’s what to do:

First of all, be aware that acetic acid is not a nice chemical and the sort you need is 80%, which is much, much stronger than vinegar. It will burn you if you get it on your hands and have similar effect on your eyes so wear gloves and goggles. If you inhale it, it could strip your lungs as well so don’t inhale.

Also, it will rot concrete or metal if you spill it so don’t.

• Set the brood box filled with the frames you want to fumigate on a solid timber floor with the entrance blocked off with foam.
• Disposable nappies make great fume pads. Take a disposable nappy/fume pad and spread, it absorbent side up, across the top bars. Pour 120ml acetic acid onto the nappy.
• If you have more than one box, just stack them up on top of each other. A nappy and 120ml of acetic acid on top should be enough for a 3-4 box stack.
• Add a shallow eke, upside down, empty section-crate or an empty super then cover with a solid roof or crownboard and make sure there are no leaks for the fumes to escape.
• Leave for one week. Don’t leave for much longer or the acid will get to work on your frame nails.
• Remove the fume pads and allow the boxes to air for a few days before using. If you’re not going to use them for a while just stack them away and they’ll be grand.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014.  All Rights Reserved.

For a start there’s the matter of CAUSTIC SODA. Note the capital letters there; those are there as a mark of Respect. When using Caustic Soda, be on your Toes because it is a VERY NASTY chemical indeed. Wear gloves, don’t spill it and don’t blame me if you do.

When mixed with water it gets hot and when you then mix that solution with a mixture of fats and oils you get a very strong chemical reaction during which more heat is produced and the end result is soap.

Then there’s the beeswax. Beeswax, as we know, is about the most recalcitrant substance known to man so don’t spill that either. It is also flammable – click here for more beeswax facts. Its effects on soap and the making of it, even in tiny quantities are profound.

For a start, in order to melt the beeswax you have to heat the oils much hotter than you normally would. Then, even a 1% addition of beeswax will cause the soap to thicken very quickly. If you are an experienced soap maker you will have gathered I am not! Nevertheless, here is a recipe for beeswax soap I’ve concocted – it works, it makes a lovely sudsy soap and I’m still here to tell the tale.

Ingredients

•  65g NaOH (Caustic Soda),
• 116g Water;
• 70g Olive oil;
• 263g Coconut oil;
• 112g Sunflower oil;
• 10g clean, grated Beeswax;
• 2 tsp Lavender oil.

Method

1. Put beeswax, sunflower, olive and coconut oils in a pan and heat very gently till the beeswax has melted;
2. Weigh the water and put it in a pyrex jug or similar;
3. Get your rubber gloves on;
4. Carefully weigh caustic soda;
5. Carefully pour the caustic soda into the jug with the water and stir with the butt end of a wooden spoon – get all the grains aloft and swirling then put the jug somewhere safe and leave it alone;
6. Grease your soap mould – such as an old loaf tin – with a lump of coconut oil;
7. Get your hand blender ready;
8. When the beeswax has melted, stir the oils with a spatula just to get them well mixed;
9. Allow the mixture to cool a little, you can stand it in water bath or just let it cool naturally, till you see it beginning to congeal on the base of the pan;
10. Pour in the caustic soda/water mixture and stir gently (with the mixer turned off) then add your lavender;
11. Now turn the mixer on and give it what-for. It should turn a nice golden colour and start to thicken;
12. When it looks like a cake batter, pour it into your soap mould;
13. Wrap the whole thing in clingfilm and old towels to keep the heat in and leave it till it’s set;

Once set and still a bit warm turn it out of the mould and cut it up into bars. If yours is like mine you will notice that the lovely golden colour has gone away and the soap is now a warm ivory.

If you are unsure of what quantities of ingredients to use, there are several online resources for soapmakers. soapcalc.net has an online soap calculator which allows you to add in your oil ingredients and water as percentages of the total oils and it will give you the correct amount of caustic soda to use.

The table below shows the output when I input the oils and beeswax in my recipe above.  The pink row (Lye – NaOH) shows the amount of Caustic Soda to use.

Click here to go to the soapcalc soap calculator

Click here for simple beeswax wraps

Click here for how to render beeswax

Click here for beeswax facts

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for beeswax furniture polish recipe

Click here for beeswax soap recipe

Click here for beeswax candlemaking

Click here for emergency home  dental repairs with beeswax

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

For the beekeeper, honey is probably the most profitable part of the harvest but it is not the only one. The next most important crop, for most, is beeswax, of which there are three sources:

• Cappings from your honey extraction;
• Old combs;
• Scrapings from hive.

Beeswax has a thousand and one cosmetic and domestic uses but unless a good price can be assured the most fundamental use for the beeswax crop is as new foundation.

What is Rendering?

Before the beekeeper can embark on any wax venture he/she must render the wax. Rendering beeswax means to melt it and separate it from physical impurities such as propolis, mouldy pollen, larval moults and chalkbrood mummies. Once rendered, spores of disease-causing organisms such as Nosema and American Foul Brood are harmlessly encapsulated within the body of the wax. Eggs of things like wax moth are killed by the heat.

What temperature?

To filter out the rubbish, the wax must first be melted so that it is runny enough to be strained. Beeswax melts at 62ºC but this temperature is not hot enough for it to run through a cloth or other strainer – it will just cool too quickly and clog up before you can say knife. If melted in water or in some kind of a water bath then the heat cannot rise to instantly damaging temperatures. In fact you can take it all the way up to close to the boiling point of water without damage then it will run through your cloth no problem. However it is damaged by prolonged or excessive heat and will discolour to a murky olive – so don’t leave it boiling for ages and ages. Oh and by the way, it will ignite if presented with a naked flame – so don’t do that either.

Once melted, the wax can be separated from the aforementioned detritus by some sort of straining method.

The horrible stuff left in the strainer – that dark brown mess of dead larvae, pupal shirts (yes – ‘shirts’) and old chalk brood etc is called ‘slumgum’. Slumgum is a disgusting mess but great for lighting fires or priming swarm catchers: just slap it around the insides of your bait hives – while still warm of course.

How pure does it need to be?

Rendering beeswax is the first step in the purification process. The cakes of wax from this first straining are only partially clean – see header photo above – but beekeeping equipment suppliers will accept this standard of wax in exchange for foundation.

I should add that you won’t get much wax like this from combs as grotty as those above. Old comb is a great firelighter and that’s what it’s best used for but unless you want a chimney fire make sure your flue is clean because it burns ferociously. For the finest purest beeswax, stick to the burr or brace comb you have scraped off the hives during the summer or better still the cappings from your extraction.

To get really pure beeswax is a two step process. Render it first to get rid of the big rubbish then if you want it pure enough for soap or cosmetics – break it up, melt again and strain through a very fine cloth.

The Process

Here are some of the many ways of rendering beeswax for foundation where priorities are sterilisation and economy:

• One of the simplest rendering methods must be Witherell’s boil-up-and-strain method. The combs are placed in cold water and brought to the boil, once melted the whole lot is strained through a 3mm mesh. When the ‘liquor’ cools the wax will set in a slab on top of the water.
• A variation of this is Witherell’s submerged sack, or boil-in-the-bag, method. Here the combs are tied up in a sack and plunged into a vessel of water which is then brought slowly to the boil. The sack is given the odd poke with a stick to let the wax float free.
• Witherell’s third method involves wrapping an entire brood box, full of old combs in their frames, in 3mm mesh then plunging the whole lot into a vat of water and soaking from ‘several minutes to several hours’. The water is then brought to a slow boil and allowed to cool so that the wax hardens on the surface of the water. That sounds impractical to me – don’t you think?
• A simple one, for small-scale bits and pieces, is the water bath method (Williams). The wax cappings etc wrapped in a pair of old tights or similar are placed in a jug which is in turn placed in pan of water. The water is brought slowly to a gentle boil and when the wax is melted, the tights (containing the debris) can be removed and the clean wax can be poured into a suitable mould for use later.
• The solar extractor is an insulated wooden box with a double glazed glass panel for a lid. Inside there is a metal tray emptying into a removable container. The old combs are placed inside and the whole box is angled to catch as much sun as possible. If the combs are wrapped in muslin then the wax will come out ready filtered. According to Hooper the sun will produce temps of 71-88ºC, however he is talking about the broiling south east of England – temperatures in Ireland could be expected to be a bit lower. The heat produced will also sterilise frames of Nosema spores and wax moth eggs. The solar extractor only extracts 20-50% of wax (Witherell) but it has the advantage of low operating costs.
• A steam wax extractor is a bit like vegetable steamer in that there is a lower vessel containing the water above which, is a steamer containing the vegetables or in this case the wax. When the water is heated to boiling, the steam is forced up into the steamer, the wax is melted and it is run off a side vent into a suitable container. Steam wax extractors are not cheap – but they do have the advantage that they can extract almost all useable wax.
• A variation on the steam wax extractor is the steam press. This is like a steam extractor in that there is a lower water container but the upper chamber consists of a press. The combs are wrapped in the filter cloth of choice and placed in the press then the water is brought up to boiling. As the steam rises up and starts to melt the wax, downward pressure can be applied to the bag of combs to force the wax out of the slumgum.
• Mr.R.O.B.Manley had one of the above but was rather disenchanted with it so he used it as a press only. He would just toss all the bits of old comb into the 20 gallon boiler he used for syrup along with gallons of rainwater. As it melted he would scoop out basins full of ‘mush’ into a sack. The sack was then put into the press under a specially made, round, flat, disk and pressure applied by means of “the heavy lathe cut screw and its spider”. The wax was run out into a large tank of rainwater “where it would solidify in all sorts of queer shapes”.
• Witherell mentions a variation of the steam extractor that instead of pressing the slumgum, spins it to extract the remaining wax centrifugally – this is the Heated Centrifuge Method. It finds little favour with Witherell though; he describes it as messy and cumbersome and more for use by professional rendering plants. Dear oh dear.

The Kochstar Melter

The ‘New’ Kochstar Wax Melter (as described in the Thorne Catalogue) is a thermostatically controlled tank to heat the wax to between 30 and 100ºC. It comes equipped with two taps, one near the bottom to run the water out and another about 4″ up to run the wax from off the top of the water because as you know – like butter, beeswax floats on water.

I bought one of these and I remain disenchanted with it. Thorne’s have instructions on their website and I’ve followed them to the letter without success. The taps have a very narrow bore so they are easily blocked by even one little cocoon and if you do want to run wax off through the top tap you will need to get it very hot or it sets in the tap and blocks it. I made a lagging jacket for it which helped a bit but not much.

My Process

Nowadays I put a trivet into the bottom of my Kochstar boiler then drape a large cloth (old net curtains from charity shops are great) with 2-3mm mesh over the top which I the fill with the various horrible bits of old wax followed by a gallon or so of rainwater and press the lid down with the edges of the cloth still hanging out over the edges. The trivet is necessary or the cloth will sink to the bottom; the element heats the bottom of the tank to a very fierce heat and if the cloth is synthetic it will stick and then it will melt and then it will burn despite the water – much like an overheated stew. This is the bitter voice of experience of both those things.

Once the beeswax is well-melted you can lift the cloth up and hold it aloft to drain a bit then slap it onto a cold concrete floor – mind your shoes – where the slumgum will solidify and can be peeled away from the cloth in the morning.

Don’t do this in the kitchen!

Don’t overheat beeswax or it will turn nasty shade of olive.

Pour the beeswax and the water into a plastic bucket, put a lid on it and let it cool. The wax will rise to the surface and set in a cake. Once it is completely cold you can tip it out. Scrape the crud off its bottom and it should look like the ones in the header photo above. That’s Millie in the background.

Further info:

Click here for beeswax facts

Click  here for a simple way to make beeswax wraps

Click here for beeswax lipbalm recipe

Click here for beeswax handcream recipe

Click here for beeswax furniture polish recipe

Click here for beeswax soap recipe

Click here for beeswax candlemaking

Click here for home dentistry with beeswax

Sources

Hooper,T. Guide to Bees and Honey. Blandford, London. 1991.

Manley,R.O.B. Honey Farming. Faber and Faber. London. 1946.

Witherell,P.C. Other Products of the Hive. In The Hive and the Honey Bee. Ed. Dadant & Sons. Dadant & Sons. Hamilton. Illinois. USA.

Williams,R. Beeswax for Show. In Bees, Hives and Honey – The Beekeeper’s Companion. Ed. Eddie O’Sulllivan. FIBKA. Ireland. 2000.

http://www.thorne.co.uk

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There is no perfect site for bees but there are points to consider – some affect the summering and some affect the wintering. It’s all swings and roundabouts (or snakes and ladders) with bees.

Accessibility

If not in the beekeeper’s garden, the prospective site needs to be accessible by the beekeeper and a vehicle of some description – be that a wheelbarrow or a van – in order to place the hives and to remove the honey later. There’s a thing called a Scottish carrier which you can make from a couple of broomsticks and some 2×1. It  defies description but you operate it like a highland sedan chair – a person each end and a stack of supers in the middle. The heavier the load the tighter the grip – I’ve never known it to slip however jauntily you trot through the heather.

Food and Water

For the bees it will need to be close to sources of nectar, pollen and water, throughout the season (unless the beekeeper intends to migrate the hives) or they will be unable to produce much honey and may even starve. They will forage for up to 3 miles but that’s a long way to go for your bread and butter. Starvation is unlikely but can happen in upland areas where forage is in short supply and the season is that much shorter.

The Elements

Assuming that these basic requirements are satisfied, the site should be neither too damp nor situated in a frost pocket and it should also be sheltered from strong winds.

Ideally the hives would face east or south to catch the early morning sun and not be under trees as some beekeepers believe that the heavy dripping of water from the trees onto the roofs of the hives can make the bees irritable and such sites are often damp. On the other hand, some of the most productive apiaries I’ve ever seen were in under dense canopies of trees.

A little winter sunshine is very beneficial to the bees but too much sun in the summer will make them swarm. The obvious answer to this conundrum is to place them within the south facing edge of a deciduous wood where the bareness of the winter trees would allow the rays of the sun to hit the faces of the hives yet the fullness of the summer canopy of leaves would provide shade from the midday summer sun. Like this very productive site:

Neighbours

The final factor to consider is proximity to neighbours – equine or human because bees sting and stings or the results of them can be serious. They also swarm which could be viewed as a nuisance by neighbours depending on where they land. It is said that bees dislike horses and will sting without provocation; bolting horses can be dangerous to riders, traffic and spectators. Bee-stings can be painful to humans too and neighbours can be obnoxious, allergic and litigious. Insurance is essential and membership of the local beekeepers association also gives access to group insurance.

Vandals

The sight of a row of hives could prove irresistible to these, who will wreak havoc if they can so it is best that hives be sited out of sight of roads or footpaths. In short, the further from your fellow man the better.

In recent years, apiaries have been targeted by thieves. Bearing in mind that a full hive with a couple of supers is worth in the region of €500 or more this is hardly surprising.

Click here for some notes on a good Heather Site

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However this is not always the case and December and January are months when the beekeeper needs to keep an eye on the winter stores. It is not possible to feed bees with syrup in the winter because they are simply unable to ripen it so instead if the hives seem light and the bees are clustered close to the top of the frames it will do no harm to put a lump of fondant over the feed hole in the crown board and cover it with a sheet of plastic to stop it from going hard.

If they seem on the edge of extinction, fondant should be placed directly onto the bees. You need to use your imagination and/or ingenuity here if the bees are not directly beneath a feed hole. It may be possible to turn the crownboard so that they are, or fondant can be flattened to a patty which can be placed under the crownboard.

Alternative place an eke on the brood box, then a cake of fondant covered in plastic is placed directly on the bees and the eke is filled up with old jumpers, blankets or sacking and the crownboard is put onto the eke.

Swienty are now selling 15kg blocks of Apifondant which can be set directly over the bees inside an eke as described above. Click here for details of those things

In February you might like to consider giving the bees a pollen supplement such as Neopoll which will give them an early boost. This is especially useful if you are considering taking bees to the oilseed rape as it should prompt the colony into early build-up. Click here for details of Neopoll from Swienty.

You can feed a light 1:1 (1kg:1litre or 1lb:1pint) sugar syrup from St.Patrick’s day onwards using a contact feeder. If you are using a specially prepared beefeed such as Ambrosia you could water this down with a little water for spring feeding.

Click here for how to prepare Wintering Bees

Click here for Michaelmas, bees and wintering

Click here for Which Feeder

Click here for how to feed a wintering apidea

Click here for mid-winter feeding of bees

Click here for mid-winter oxalic acid Varroa treatment

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