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

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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.

Check occasionally

Once they are fed, dosed and tied down, all that remains is to visit once in a while to make sure they haven’t been tumbled by cattle or the weather. Now that MAQs strips have been made legal here we may never have to open bees midwinter ever again. We really may be able to Leave them Alone.

Stores

All that said, we do need to keep an eye on the stores. Go round and heft the hive and if they are feeling a bit on the light side, place a block of fondant over the feed hole and cover with clingfilm or a plastic box to prevent it from drying out.

Pollen Supplement

In February, despite the weather, the bees will be aware of the lengthening days and will be starting their long spring build up. There should be a little brood in the nest and you might like to consider aiding the build-up by adding a pollen supplement. Neopoll is a fortified, fondant feed containing pollen – it looks like marzipan and costs about a fiver for a 1kg pack so it’s not cheap but if you add it now or perhaps a bit later in February and the spring turns into one like last year’s endless one you could save your stocks from starvation.

Pollen substitute

I should clarify – a pollen supplement is the addition of extra pollen, like Neopoll for instance, whereas a pollen substitute is something proteinacious like soya flour and malt extract. Not to be sneered at! Last spring when I couldn’t get Neopoll for love or money I bought soya flour and malt extract from the local health food shop and mixed up a substitute. It saved several colonies of bees which would have died otherwise. Click here for recipe.

Smoker

If like me you haven’t finished cleaning your gear from last year – get on with it, before you know it you’ll be up to your oxters in queencells. Don’t forget your smoker. Smokers get all choked up with tar and dottle so dismantle it and give it a good going over. Alternatively – get out your blowtorch and set fire to it but mind you don’t torch the bellows. And don’t let it get too hot – I once heard of someone who melted his rivets.

Check the bellows for wear and tear, holes can often be repaired with a bit of common sense and some duct tape. Failing that, new sets of bellows are sometimes available from the suppliers.

If you are going to treat yourself to a new smoker – get one that’s fitted with a grille around the firebox so you can clamp it between your knees without setting fire to your beesuit. Grilles sometimes come with a handy hook so you can hang the smoker off the hive stand. Make sure it’s a model that will allow you to replace the bellows.

Swarm Control

You will of course have worked out your strategy for the coming year especially regarding swarm control and queen rearing. Read, read, read. For swarm control I recommend L.E.Snelgrove’s Swarming – Its Control and Prevention. Click here for more on winter reading.

Queen Rearing

For queen rearing look up Cloake Board Method – good list of day-by-day instructions on Dave Cushman’s website. Every beekeeper should try and selectively rear a few queens – what a luxury is a laying queen mid-season! Plan now, set it up, get a couple of Apideas and the season will be a doddle.

If that’s all old hat to you – read this book: ‘Breeding Techniques and Selection for Breeding of the Honeybee’ by Friedrich Ruttner. Click here for review.

Beesuit

Examine your beesuit with care especially round the seams and over the veil – a stitch in time saves nine and perhaps a quantity of dignity. I know for a fact that there’s a seam I need to attend to soon or I’m going to be leaping about with bees in my bonnet later. When bees find a hole in a beesuit, they’ll all follow each other through in single file then you get that horrible feeling that you are not alone…

Queen Marking

Don’t forget to check you have the correct queen marking pen for this year – Green for 2014. The easiest way to remember is ‘Will You Rear Good Bees’ – White, Yellow, Red, Green and Blue starting with white on years 1 and 6.

Consider your hive tool. Do you like it? Would you like to try a different type?  If you only have one you might need a spare?

Frames

Prepare your order for frames etc. This used to drive me mad but now I have a spreadsheet to help me. I type in what I’ve got then I type in what I want and it tells me exactly what I need in terms of individual frame parts, wax, boxes – the lot.

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.

In this country the two main types of hive in use are the National and the Commercial.

National

National hives are slightly smaller and much lighter to handle but they are more difficult to build. The construction of the hives means they have a very good handhold to lift them with and the frames have a long lug which makes them easy to grip. The recessed wall on two sides also means they are almost a double wall hive if you use a deep roof in the winter. Two of the hives in the photo above have deep roofs. This photo was taken midsummer (obviously) so they have been split over Snelgrove boards and supered but you can imagine how far down the brood box such a roof comes and the insulation it provides to the sides of the brood box when the supers are off.

The small size makes the National hive the better bet for the Native Irish bee. If you were to use a Commercial hive with these bees you could end up with all the honey in the brood chamber.

Commercial

Commercials are big hives. The name somehow suggests you’ll get more honey – not the case, in bad year the bees will put all the honey in the brood chamber. They are a very heavy hive when full but they are easy to make. They have very small handholds which are difficult to grip so you end up having to twist the hive and grab it from underneath. The frames also have very small lugs to you need the grip of a rock-climber to haul a  full frame up and out.

Which is the best hive for this climate is a debate for the pub.

It is possible to operate using National brood boxes and Commercial supers – that way you have the best of both worlds but it would be inadvisable to have both National and Commercial brood boxes on the go – sooner or later that becomes a nuisance.

New or Second Hand?

Hives are available new or second-hand or can be made relatively easily and cheaply by all but the accident-prone or manually inept but be aware of the beespace. New hives are more expensive but they come disease-free and with a longer life-expectancy. Old hives are cheaper but, again, the beekeeper should be aware that disease could be lurking in old hives. A pertinent question to ask the seller would be – what happened to the bees?

It is recommended to flame the interior of old hives with a blow lamp as a way of sterilising but some diseases, such as American Foul Brood (AFB), have tough resistant spores which can survive for up to 40 years and could be tucked out of reach in tiny crevices. If such was the case then these spores could germinate and infect your lovely new bees at a later date. This would be more the case with brood boxes but second hand supers would hold less risk. For brood diseases anyway.

If you do decide to go for second hand boxes, make sure you check they are waterproof and bee and wasp proof. As hives age they tend to give out at the joints and small gaps appear. The metal sheeting of roofs can split at the corners or be otherwise ruptured.

If you are good with wood it is a good idea to buy a good, brand-new, flat-packed hive. That way you will know what the best looks like, you can copy it and the dimensions will be correct.

Material

Hives are available in cedar, deal or plywood.

• Cedar is durable so hives are indestructible by the weather and need not be treated.
• Deal is cheaper but unlike cedar it is not durable and hives need to be treated with a wood preservative (one without insecticide) or painted.
• Plywood is the cheapest but my advice would be – avoid it. Marine ply is extremely heavy. The other stuff will very quickly succumb to the climate how ever carefully you paint it.

Polystyrene hives

I bought a few of these.  I found them relatively cheap. They came flat packed but slotted together very easily and didn’t need to be glued or anything.

To paint or not to paint?

You don’t have to paint polyhives but they will last longer if you do. Look closely, the polystyrene consists of lots of little balls all pressed together. If you don’t seal the surface, a thin film of water can get betwixt and between and if it freezes – the ice expands and weathering can begin.  I used one coat of gloss – no undercoat – is fine has lasted for at least 5 years now.

You can see some of them in use in the header picture – the green boxes.

They have advantages and they have disadvantages:

Advantages

• Relatively cheap
• Flat packed but slot together very easily with no need to glue or nail. That’s not so silly as it sounds – they are very dense and will take a nail so long as you don’t ask much of it.
• Lovely and warm for overwintering or drawing wax and heathering.
• Great for supers where little manipulation is required.

Disadvantages

Granted, this poly box took the brunt of this fallen branch but the front wall just popped out and the whole thing was a write off.

• If you drop them and they land wrong they’ll just burst!
• Cannot be scorched to sterilise eg AFB etc. Instead, you need to scrape clean then scrub with a strong household soda solution then sterlise with bleach.
• They won’t take much scraping, there are weak places which show wear quite quickly.
• Not great for manipulation – the frame lugs sit flush and get propolised so less good as brood boxes.
• There is a new generation of polystyrene hives now which do have a rail which is good but they are less robust than the previous type.
• The Varroa floors are not great – having a rather small mesh area but you could always use a timber one.

I would buy more polystyrene supers but I prefer wooden brood boxes.

A word of warning – whichever hive you buy – don’t go knocking up all those frames before you need to or the foundation will go all hard and the bees won’t draw it properly.

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

According to Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary of 1901 Flummery is an ‘acid jelly made from the husks of oats’ and water but it has since come to mean ‘an empty compliment or anything insipid’. A recipe for traditional Flummery seems to bear this out, with its description of a rather flaccid, glutinous dish, resembling porridge but with the oats carefully removed.

Flora MacDonald is said to have been halfway through a dish of Flummery when she was arrested, having just delivered Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Isle of Skye in 1747. Given the nature of Old Scottish Flummery she may have been a little relieved by the interruption of her meal. I know I would be if I was arrested halfway through a tepid dish of jellied porridge.

You may be relieved to hear that the following is an adaptation of the old Scots recipe. It uses less water, is enriched with much more cream and honey and is then elevated to almost ambrosial heights by the addition of a generous quantity of Scots whisky liqueur. For the final excitement – the oats are back!

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 level tablespoon oatmeal
• ½ pint cream
• 3 tablespoons clear honey
• 4 tablespoons liqueur whisky i.e. Drambuie or similar
• Juice of half a lemon

Method

1. Heat the dry oatmeal gently in a heavy based saucepan until it turns a golden brown then set aside.
2. Beat the cream till smooth but not stiff.
3. Melt honey over gentle heat till it runs. Do not boil.
4. Fold the heated honey into the whipped cream.
5. Stir in the liqueur whisky and the lemon juice.
6. Serve the warm honey and cream mixture in tall glasses with browned oatmeal sprinkled on top.

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

Look out for orange/brown pollen loads – along with the brighter orange from the snowdrops.

In fact, when the weather does warm up and the bees are active and bringing in that brown pollen it is worth going out to watch them working the gorse because the flower is specially designed to  make best use of the bees for pollination. Enjoy the strong coconut scent of the flowers while you’re at it.

The flowers each have a keel (lower part) and a banner (upper part). The banner is as the name suggests – a brightly coloured flag to lure insects. The keel is the boat-shaped lower part which offers itself as an insect landing pad. But all is not what it seems. The first bee to land on a freshly opened flower triggers the keel to burst apart releasing the spring-loaded reproductive paraphernalia which shoots forth like a boxing glove on a spring. The unsuspecting bee is hoisted into the air and a bunch of stamens, like a paint brush, dusts its abdomen with pollen.  At the same time, the style (female bit) jabs the bee in the belly and picks up gorse pollen from a previous floral heist. In fact here’s a photo I took – click it for a close up:

They say that the bees only get pollen from the gorse but if you watch them, they battle their way past the stamens and strive to get to the very throat of the flower. I think there must be a little smear of fresh nectar down there to draw them in – not enough for a crop of course but enough to act as a lure to a poor creature that’s struggled through winter on reconstituted and regurgitated honey.

Gorse is also under threat from the strangely named ‘Heritage Bill’ which came before the Seanad in 2017. If this bill is passed then among other acts of environmental vandalism we will have to watch out lovely gorse grubbed out and burned in full March bloom.

Click here for more about the Heritage Bill

Click here for more on gorse pollination

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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