January 27, 2010

Minding your own beeswax

Winter Beekeeping
Minding your own beeswax

It is the end of January, about the most boring time of the year for a beekeeper. There are no bees flying around the hives, no spring flowers, and it is too early to order more bees.

The new beekeeping catalogs have not even arrived in the mail yet!




Right: Uncapping the Honeycomb. The hot electric knife melts the comb and sizzles as it slices its way through the wax.
















Suddenly you remember that bucket full of wax cappings, from the fall honey extraction, sitting in your basement AHHH a bee project at last!

Beeswax was being used by people more than 5,000 years ago. The ancient Egyptians used wax for embalming and making waxen figures.

The Romans used wax tablets to write private messages on. The message, once read, could easily be smoothed out and erased by running your fingers over the message etched into the soft wax.

In the fourteenth century having beeswax candles was a sign of nobility. Beeswax candles burned more cleanly, burned longer, and smelled much better than the cheaper candles made from mutton fat.

That is actually one of the things that hooked me on beekeeping when I was in my teens. No not nutten fat…. It was that sweet, sweet smell of beeswax. There is only one thing better….. That’s the sweet smell of melted beeswax and hot honey on extracting day.



Left: Frames of honey comb sits in the uncapping tank. Wax cappings can be seen at the bottom of the tank. The screen at the bottom of the tank allows honey to drain off the cappings and into a holding tank.










I use the beeswax produced by our bees for candles, lip balm, and hand cream. But before the beeswax can be used for these items it must be cleaned. How do you clean beeswax…. Well I tell you my secrets.

You may not know that beeswax is produced by glands located on the underside of the worker bees. These glands become active when the young bees reach a certain age. It takes a lot of energy (food) to produce wax, and some colonies are much better at producing it and building comb than others. The wax that the bees produce is the construction material of the hive. Wax is molded by the bees to create the comb that is used to raise young bees and store the pollen and honey they use as food during the winter months. It is interesting to note that although wax production and comb building is the work of younger bees, If by chance something were to kill off all the younger bees, the older bees would suddenly become able to produce wax again.

So how do we get the wax from the bees?......

We take it of course.



Right: Melting the wax cappings in an old pot containing water.











Bees are avid builders. They will build comb everywhere. Where you want it, and many times where you don’t. The hives we use are designed to encourage the bees to building comb were the beekeeper wants it..... In the frames of the hive.

We start with a sheet of wax in the frames as a starting point for the bees. The bees will then produce wax and build out the frame by building the comb. Bees will also produce comb between boxes and on top of frames. This wax is removed from the hive during inspections. Some of the wax we use is collected in this manner.

Some of the comb is used by the bees to store honey, hopefully a lot of honey, although some years not enough. When the honey is "ripe" the bees will “cap” it with a layer of very white wax. This layer of wax protects the honey from absorbing moisture from the air, and thus preserves the honey until it is needed by the bees.

In a good year the bees will produce an abundance of this honeycomb allowing the beekeeper to “steal” some of it for his own personal use. We can’t take all of it, even though we want to, because the bees need to keep about 50 pounds for themselves in order to survive a typical New England winter.

In a good year the bees will produce about 60 pounds of surplus honey per hive. I have had hives produce up to 90 to 100 pounds of surplus honey.



Left: Dibris left on the cheese cloth after the melted wax and water is poured into the disposable container.













The frames of honeycomb are removed from the hive and taken to the extracting room to have the honey removed. This process includes using a hot electric knife to cut off the white cappings exposing the liquid honey. The frame can then be put into an extractor (basically a large centrifuge) and the honey is spun out of the frames.

At the end of the process you end up with frames containing empty comb, liquid honey, and the beeswax cappings. The empty comb will be placed back in the hives the following season allowing the bees to just refill them without having to rebuild them.


Right: Clean wax floats to the surface while the water and dibris settles to the bottom of the container. This process must be completed three times to clean the wax enough for use.













The wax cappings along with all the burr comb can then be processed into usable wax. There are probably many ways to clean and render the wax. This is just my method.

Remember that wax is flammable and care must be taken when heating it!

I use an electric heating element to melt our wax. I always mix water with my wax when melting it down. This insures that it will not over heat and burst into flames. The water also helps “clean” the wax. Once melted I pour the wax and water through two layers of cheese cloth into a disposable container. The wax and water is allowed to cool. Once cool the container can be cut open releasing the dirty water and the solid wax. The wax will have many impurities left in it, and this process is repeated two additional times before it is clean enough to use.


Left: The reward for all the hard work. Sweet smelling clean bees wax ready for use in candles and balms.













It is a lot of work!

But the sweet yellow beeswax reward is well worth it!

January 16, 2010

Candy for the Bees

It is mid January here on Cape Cod, and we have had our first thaw day of the winter. Today’s temperature managed to climb into the 40’s. That meant that it was warm enough for the bees to take their all important cleansing flights. You see bees cluster at temperatures below 40 degrees.
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Left: Making Bee Candy. All ingredients mixed in the pot on top of the stove.
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That means they group together in a tight ball. By moving their wing muscles without moving their wings they generate heat to keep the inside of the cluster of bees between 80 and 90 degrees. The bees will remain in this cluster and slowly move around the hive in order to access the stores of honey which is their food.

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Right: Heating the mixture to 245 degrees F.
Remember to hold it at this temperiture for 3
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If temperatures remain too low for too long a period of time then the bees can run out of food and starve to death only inches away from stored honey. To help them survive conditions where they cannot relocate to other areas containing food, beekeepers will often place candy above the bee cluster. This provides them with additional food stores in the event they run out of honey where they are clustered.
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Left: Mixing the Candy in cool water. It is ready to pour out when it cools to 200 degrees F.
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When temperatures manage to increase above 40 degrees the bees can break cluster and move around freely. They will take cleansing flights to rid themselves of the waste that they have been “holding in” all winter. Glad I’m not a bee!
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Right: Harden candy in the cookie sheet
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Since the temperature was above 40 degrees today I decided to open up the hives and check the status of the bee candy I had installed in the hives in late November. In fact, each of the hives had eaten all the bee candy in a four to five inch diameter area around the cluster.
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Right: Hive being prepared for winter. Notice pest strips between the frames which need to be removed before winter. Additional items seen include menthal oil paper towels used for tracheal mite treatement, and sugar grease patty used for varroa mite treatement. After the pest strips are removed this hive will be ready for winter candy feed.
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I installed additional candy as required in each of the hives.

Since it was warm enough, and I was disturbing the cluster of bees, they started their cleansing flights.

By the time I was done installing the bee candy I had brown drops of bee droppings all over me. Such are the hazards of beekeeping.



Here is my recipe for bee candy:

Ingredients:
5 lbs granulated cane sugar, 1 pint corn syrup, 1 & 1/3 cups water

Equipment:
Candy Thermometer, Cookie Sheet, Four oven mitts, Mixer, Sink with cold water

Directions:
1. Line the cookie sheet with wax paper and set aside on two oven mitts. Make sure the cookie sheet is level.

2. Take all ingredients and place in a pot. Mix until all ingredients are moist. Place on medium high heat. Place the candy thermometer on the side of the pot.

3. Heat the mixture until the temperature on the candy thermometer reads 245 degrees. Hold the mixture at that temperature for 3 minutes.

4. Turn off heat and immediately place the pot into the cool water (using the other two oven mitts). Use the mixer to mix the candy until the temperature drops to 200 degrees.

5. Pour mixture into the cookie sheet and allow the candy to harden and cool. While the candy is still warm make slices to form 8 or more squares.

6. Remove the candy from the cookie sheet and place pieces in the hives above the cluster of bees. Check monthly to see if more candy is needed.

Spring

Spring
Peach Pollen

Spring Pollen

Spring Pollen

Queen Cell

Queen Cell
Well Fed Queen Cell

Marked Queen

Marked Queen
Queen produced from my second graft attempt