Minding our own BeesWax --- and making candles

Many years ago I heard the expression, "mind your own beeswax".  I thought it referred to minding your own business.  Turns out I may have been right for a change.

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There is an absurd story, much repeated on the internet, that 18th-century ladies used to fill in the pockmarks on their faces (this was when smallpox was a common and disfiguring disease)with beeswax, which would melt if the lady sat too near the fire. If someone else warned her about this, she would retort "mind your OWN beeswax!" This story is only mentioned to say that there isn't a shred of truth in it. Though beeswax was often (and still is) a component of cosmetics of all kinds, it was not used as a pockmark filler in this way. The beeswax saying is of 1920s origin, a garbling of "mind your own business." While it might seem harshly rude to say "mind your own business," changing the last word to "beeswax" softens the blow, and makes a jovial point of the same sentiment.  http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_mind_your_own_beeswax_originate
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Transition --- As my wife and I are working more with our honey bees, we are looking for other products from the hive.  The Bee Boss gave us a 5 gallon tub of the beeswax years ago and my wife dutifully promised to make something from it.  Well, time slipped away from us.  We bought a crockpot to melt the stuff and after seeing another beekeeper simply melt wax and pour it into a mold we thought it would be easy.  WRONG!

sO like many things bee, we had to go back to the beeginning. 

Where does beeswax come from anyhow??  Found these nifty photos on Bing that show you the source of beeswax.

A honey bee worker has four pairs of wax glands in her ventral abdominal segments. 



Note that PURE beeswax is clear. (See the three small beeswax chips above and new wax on the abdomen of a honey bee below.)  

This is a direct product from a honey bee worker.   Honey bees use this material to make the comb that is used by the honey bee colony to store honey.  The queen lays eggs in hexagonal (6 sided) cells that are between 4.5  and 5.4 millimeters in diameter to make more honey bees. (brood)  From what I have read, honey bees naturally make their cells 4.5 millimeters while commercial wax foundation is the larger 5.4 millimeters.  The purpose of the larger cell size is for larger bees and more honey.  This has made for some problems in the honey bee world that are not so sweet.  Back to the subject.

Our purpose in using the comb for now is to make beeswax candles.

Why use beeswax to make a candle? 

One reason My wife found in the write up below @ http://www.busybeebeeswax.ca/waxfacts.html.  If you go to the web site, note the other types of candles, their composition and byproducts.

 BEESWAX is the only all natural candle wax. It’s a sustainable and renewable resource. When you buy a beeswax candle you’re supporting beekeepers, which means supporting those busy little insects that pollinate food crops and keep the world green naturally. Beeswax candles burn cleaner, brighter, hotter  and longer than other candles. When natural golden beeswax burns it gives off a soft glow* and sweetens the  room with its natural scent — no artificial scents or colors required! Many people are allergic to the  artificial waxes and artificial fragrances common in today’s candles, even in church! Beeswax is non-allergenic and is a natural air cleaner, recommended by the American Lung Association. It’s the best choice for asthma and allergy sufferers. Beeswax candles burn cleanly, don’t drip when properly used, and have long burn times,  saving you money. Be sure that the candles you buy are 100% beeswax – some countries allow as little as 10%  beeswax in candles labeled as ‘beeswax’.

*The light spectrum emitted from a beeswax candle is the closest of all waxes to natural sunshine

 

Another reason to use BEESWAX for candles has to do with their efficiency in burning.  I read somewhere, can't find the source, that one of the reasons beeswax candles were used exclusively in medieval cathedrals is they release NO SOOT.  Beeswax candles actually clean the air whereas all other candles leave impurities (soot) in the air.  Soot /ˈsʊt/ is impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soot

 

So whether you want to support a beekeeper; see pure light (sunshine) or experience cleaner air, beeswax candles are a really neat option.

 ONE WAY TO MAKE BEESWAX CANDLES

We will offer classes in making beeswax candles.  If interested contact me @ beeboy@wildthingsinabox.com.

 We are now going to discuss how we make beeswax candles.  My queen bee and I have spent many hours over the old stove and read many an article to get where we are.

Step 1 - Gather beeswax

The best beeswax to use is either the cappings off the end of the comb (a byproduct generated when harvesting honey) or newly formed and unused wax comb.  This wax will be a white color and have a minimum of impurities in it.  BEESWAX with impurities will NOT BURN.  We know we tried. We used a crockpot with no temperature control and reheated some old beeswax.  We did a minimum filtering of the wax and poured it into a neat glass candle form with a medium wick.  The results were a candle that would NOT sustain a flame. Useless!

Step 2 - 5 -- Clean/filter your beeswax

You will need a double boiler and a wax thermometer to melt your wax.  Beeswax has a relatively low melting point range of 62 to 64 °C (144 to 147 °F). If beeswax is heated above 85 °C (185 °F) discoloration occurs. The flash point of beeswax is 204.4 °C (399.9 °F). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax

Pour your melted wax through panty hose, t-shirts or whatever your little heart desires into Tupperware or other container and let it cool.  The neat thing about a Tupperware container is you can see the wax separate from the honey.  The wax will be on top and the honey on the bottom.  Depending on the quality of your wax/honey mixture, you can retrieve some additional honey in addition to the beeswax.  Pour off the honey; rinse off the beeswax in water and repeat.

     Why do I have this step listed three times?  So far we have found it necessary to triple filter our beeswax to get all of the impurities out.  After the first filtering it looks like we have everything out of the beeswax however once we repeat the melting/pouring steps more impurities are revealed.  In step one above you will note our experience with impure beeswax.(The candle does NOT remain lit.)

     Interesting note -  Biblically the number 3 is the number of perfection.  Turns out the third word in Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew refers to Elohiym (God).

Step 6 - Selecting your wick and candle form
From what we have read the best wicks are pure cotton and thick.  We tried medium and wooden wicks with no success. By no success we mean the candle would not stay lit. 

Step 7 - Pouring the wax
Once you have everything ready:

• Pure wax
• Wick secured into candle form
• Candle form stable and ready to receive beeswax 

 Pour in your melted beeswax.

Step 8 - Letting your wax cool
 We let our beeswax candle cool overnight.  The color of the candle is a light brown/tan color.


Step 9 - Burn baby burn

Now for the moment you have been waiting for, light your candle.  The wick should have been trimmed to about 1/4 inch above the wax.  Keep your candle out  of the wind as beeswax candles are very sensitive to air movement.

The glow is magical and after all of your work you can really appreciate the gentle sunlike glow of the candle.

Bee Boy out!

Getting ready for Spring

We had planned on taking a quick look at our honeybees but knew that if the weather allowed we wanted to provide them a little extra food.  We are focusing on raising survivor bees so we don't want to spoil them.

As you can see in the picture above it was a nice day and the temperatures were actually above 60°.  We had fed all of our hives sugar fondant to help them through the winter but to avoid such detrimental issues as moisture dripping onto the cluster and hive beetle hiding places with a normal hive top feeder.  The hives that were surviving had consumed ALL of the fondant.  The hives that died had fondant left.

Yep dead bees don't eat. 

We took all of the sugar fondant we had prepared and spread it out on all of the remaining live hives.  We started the winter with 6 but have lost 2.  So for us 3rd grade math students, we have 4 hives left.

Who is making it?  The two hives that died were Russian bees.  We bought one hive (second year for this hive) and the other was the result of a swarm from the first/mother hive. (2012)  We took NO honey from either hive but fed them little as well.  Both hives were is some of the more exposed areas of the property so they may have gotten colder.  So far this season we have touched the 20's but not colder.

The four remaining hives include our original 2010 Aleph and Gimmel.  One hive is a Minnesota hygienic we bought from Carl Chesick & Stuart Van Meter of the Center for Honeybee Research in the Hendersonville, NC area.  We split Gimmel last year creating Hey (using Hebrew letters for our hives) and that hive is surving so far as well.  The last survivor is also from Carl Chesick & Stuart Van Meter of the Center for Honeybee Research  and we have them in a Warre` hive.

When we looked at the dead hives, it was interesting to observe not ONE small cluster but a number of them in each hive.  Little honey so I am guessing they may have starved out.  Does this make me a bad beekeeper.  Perhaps.  It is interesting to note that we applied the same methods to our other 4 surviving hives.

WINTER IS STILL NOT OVER.

We inserted mediums boxes on the bottom of our 3 Langstroth hives (nadiring instead of supering).  We have done nothing so far to  our Warre` hive but may do a split in March/April.

Well that's about all of the news that is news from Plan Bee.

Bee Boy out.

The ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM or ---------Shed ready

My Queen Bee and I live in a condominium in Charlotte, NC most of the time.  Our little slice of heaven does not have lots of room but is a very efficient place to live.  With the kids gone and the dog dead, we are reorganizing.  My old office is being converted into a guest room and our upstairs bedroom is now our office.  My old office used to house lots of bee equipment but with the reorganization, we moved the beekeeping equipment to our living room.  What a mess.  It is the elephant in the room.  We discussed what to do with all of the gear until we had an "ah ha" moment.

Living room mess.

Shed Ready - On Plan Bee we have about 23 1/2 acres.  One bright sunny day I asked myself why not take advantage of that space.  After all we use our beekeeping equipment almost exclusively on Plan Bee so wouldn't that make more sense??  So I have begun clearing out an area behind our Plan Bee Picnic Shelter.  Plan A for Plan Bee is to clear the area, level it up with dirt, pour a concrete slab, lay down some 6x6 beams and then put up a shed.

 

Area being cleared behind the picnic shelter.

 

The big tree in the back is about 3 feet in diameter but it was rotted away in the middle.  Interesting enough without proper felling, it would have fallen exactly where we wanted to put our new shed.  So we beat it to the punch.  So far I have spent 2 days of chainsawing and dragging away trees and brush to get this area ready for more dirt and a concrete pad.  Good news is there are few bugs this time of year and it is a great area to work on.

 

Fixed error with well head dusk to dawn light.  We have a regular 60 watt light bulb under our well cover.  During the winter it keeps it just warm enough so that the well head won't freeze.  I noticed the electric bill did not reflect electric useage but instead showed the same value on the meter.  Upon inspection, after removing the black widow spiders, I noted the light bulb needed a few more turns in to work.  Tested it again with the on setting and then the dusk to dawn timer setting and that seems to have fixed the problem.

 

 

 Chopped an irrigation pipe in two which is not good for water pressure in the line.  At first I was going to wait until next trip to repair the line as I didn't have my drip irrigation repair kit with me.  Then I remembered there was an end piece/ end cap to the line.  Used my machete to make a clean straight cut and repaired the line. Yea!!  Problem solved.

 

Bee Grim -- regarding my name.  I wanted to use my nom de plum (Pen Name) or "Bee Boy".  Alas, Google said the name did not comply with their naming standards.  I then thought, how about "Bee Happy", guess what, same deal.  Mr. Google has allowed me to use my desired first name, "Bee" but requires I use my real last name, "Grim".  Yea, I know.  So anyhow as I tell my friends and others I try not to bee Grim but alas, it is my name.  So Bee Grim I am as far as Google is concerned but I hope to either Bee Happy or bee a Bee Boy one day soon.

Langstroth Hive Stand Instructions

We just had someone ask about our hive stands and I thought the question would be of interest to a number of beekeepers.

Hello from Southwest Louisiana.

We have started keeping bees and were on the net looking for a bee hive stand that would work for us.

Ran across your blog showing the long hive stand that you moved a hive to.  On some property you had purchased.

Had about 8 hives on it in the photo.

Looks like you used several single post in the ground with y arms to hold double rails. 

Do you have plans or the details for the hive stand?   Looked on the blog but did not see dimensions, material, etc.

We currently have 5 hives.

Sincerely,

Steven & Nola

So here is a step by step for building a hive stand for a Langstroth Hive.  This stand is designed for two (2) Langstroth hives with plenty of work space between them.  The hive stand referenced by Steven & Nola is not very functional.  It is difficult to get around to work on the hives.  We find a stand that supports 2 hives at a time to be the best.  When we take off the telescoping cover to our hives while working them, we place them in the open space between the hives on the stand instead of putting them on the ground. We work our hives one at a time. Convenient!!

Building a hive stand is best done in comfortable weather or just before the bees start flying.  Somehow doing this in the summer in a bee suit is just NO FUN.

Materials:

•      2 2"x8"x8' pieces of STRAIGHT pressure treated lumber
•      4 2"x8"x12" pieces of  pressure treated lumber (we use pine)
•      24 4" screws (galvanized so they won't rust) (Phillips head ONLY)
•      4 cinder blocks (we use the small ones)
•      1 or 2 bags of sand (optional)
•      Wood chips or mulch (we have a pile of it so not sure how to measure this)
•      Black plastic bags or black plastic sheeting (This will make sense in a minute)
•      Wooden shims
•      Level
•      Tape measure

Tools:

•      Electric drill & screw driver
•      Flat head shovel (Not the pointy version)
•      Compass
•      Beekeeper's assistant.
•      Picnic table or other flat surface to support the stand under construction (optional)

Steps to construct & install hive stand:

1. Be sure you have a sunny location to set up your hive stand.  If you have a shady one you invite hive beetles & other unwanted pests.  In North Carolina our bees like it hot.
2. Your hive will face southeast so be sure BEFORE you start this does NOT represent a problem. We have our hives facing southeast to maximize daylight for the bees.
3. Begin assembling the hive stand.

               a. Using your tape measure, measure roughly equal spacing

                   for your cross members, the 12" pieces.  Some

                   beekeepers want the support pieces to come under

                   the edge of each hive. Think through your strategy before

                   you begin the next step.

               b. With you cross pieces in place, drill 24 pilot holes in the
                   side of your hive stand.  This represents 3 pilot holes for
                   each cross piece on each side.
                c. Using your electric screw driver, screw in the 24 4" screws
                    to assemble the stand.  (Note - I tried 3" screws, they
                    were too short.  I also tried only using 2 screws per
                    support, not enough support.  I already made the mistakes
                    so you won't have to. But......)
               d. Your hive stand is now assembled

     4. Preparing your hive stand location

    

               a.  Using your compass, determine which direction is

                    southeast.

               b.  Place your hive stand on the ground so that it faces

                    southeast and to determine what you need to do to

                    level the ground where your hive stand will be placed.

               c. Using your level, flat head shovel & beekeeper's assistant

                   to level the area where the hive stand will set up.

   

              d.  Place the 4 cinder blocks a foot or so in from the end of

                   the hive stand and the place the hive stand onto the cinder

                   blocks.  See above.

              e.  Relevel the stand that now is on top of the cinder blocks.

                   (2 cinder blocks per side)

               f. Remember I said straight pieces of lumber.  Chances are it
                  was not as straight as we had hoped. This is where the
                  shims come in handy.  Using the shovel, shims, level
                  and beekeeper's assistant, finish the leveling.  The
                  Beekeeper's assistant can stand back and eyeball the
                  stand to point out obvious mistakes.  My assistant is
                  excellent and finding my mistakes and not just with
                  the hive stand. Ha!

 Here is the finished project with hives on the hive stand.  At this point we were ready for yet another hive.  We ended up moving these hives to our property in Liberty, NC, Plan Bee.

Hope this is of value to you.  If you have questions we will try and respond.

 That's all  folks.  The Bee Boy out.

Bee Die In

Every time we meet new people and they learn we are beekeepers, other than do we sell honey, the next question is, "Why are bees dieing?" or "Have they figured out what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)?"  At this time, no one claims to have all of the answers but evidence is mounting that we humans are killing bees through our use of systemic insecticides and in the process may be killing ourselves.  Some folks in Berkley stated their opinion a bit stronger when they staged a bee die in at a Bayer Chemical plant.

 Dressed like honeybees, one by one they dropped dead at the main gate to this Bayer plant.  You can read more about it in the story "Berkeley's Bayer Stung by Critics" in The Berkley Daily Planet.

Queen of the Sun

Here is a really great bee video if you haven't seen it yet.  They are trying to make a difference and save our bees.

Warre` Hive or What goes up will come down

My wife was listening to a podcast and heard something about a Warre` hive. (When going to Wikipedia to research scroll down a bit to find out about this type of hive.)  She reads and researches far and wide.  Once she thinks there is something of interest, she calls me in to discuss and do more in depth research.  So it was with a Warre` hive.  If you haven't heard of these before, you are not alone. 

Langstroth Hive - It turns out the modern hive that most beekeepers use today is the Langstroth hive. 
In 1851, the Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810-1895), a native of Philadelphia, noted that when his bees had less than 1 cm (3/8 inch) of space available in which to move around, they would neither build comb into that space nor cement it closed with propolis. This measurement is presently called "bee space". During the summer of 1851, Langstroth applied the concept to keeping the lid free on a top-bar hive, but in autumn of the same year, he realized that the "bee space" could be applied to a newly-designed frame which would prevent the bees from attaching honeycomb to the inside of the hive box. This attachment of comb to the hive wall was a difficulty with frameless designs, such as Dzierżon's frameless movable-comb hive (1835). US Patent 9300 was issued to Langstroth on October 25, 1852, and remained valid despite numerous attempts to challenge it based on its alleged use of prior art.
Rev. Langstroth subsequently published a book called A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee^[2], nowadays commonly known as The Hive and the Honey Bee or, under the title with which it was recently (2004) re-issued, as Langstroth's Hive and the Honey-Bee: The Classic Beekeeper's Manual. In this book, Langstroth described the proper dimensions and use of the modern beehive as we know it today. Prior to discovery of the dimensions of "bee space", bees were mostly hived in skeps (conical straw baskets) or gums (hollowed-out logs which approximated the natural dwellings of bees), or in box hives (a thin-walled wooden box with no internal structure).

When my wife and I went through bee school, we didn't hear or at least it didn't register about different types of hives other than skeps.  We were taught that skeps were bad and illegal because you had to kill all of the bees to harvest the honey. Not very ecofriendly

Back to Warre`. 

As you can read below, Abbe` Warre` researched 350 different hive systems before coming up with his own model.

Details here, you can skip read later.
Abbé Émile Warré (1867 - 1951) lived in France and kept bees in a wide variety of hives with the aim of finding the best hive for both bees and beekeeper.

L'Abbé Eloi François Émile Warré was born on 9 March 1867 at Grébault-Mesnil in the Somme département. He was ordained a priest on 19 September 1891 -- Amiens diocese -- and became the parish priest of Mérélessart (Somme) in 1897 then of Martainneville (Somme) in 1904.

He disappeared from the records in 1916 subsequently to reappear at Saint-Symphorien (Indre-et-Loire) to devote himself exclusively to beekeeping. He died at Tours on 20 April 1951.

Abbé Warré developed The People's Hive based on his studies of 350 hives of different systems that existed at his time as well as of the natural habits of the bee.

Resume Warre` (Great reference link)

We just became Certified Naturally Grown beekeepers and wanted to have a hive that does the following:

1.  Have the bees build out their own comb to reduce chemical contamination found in bees wax from ALL commercial wax foundation.
2. Have the bees build foundation that is bee size.  From our research, commercial wax foundation is 5.4 millimeters but bees normally build out at 4.5 millimeters.  This creates bigger bees that can't fly as far and some theorize allows external pests to enter the bees internally.
3. Allow for a systematic way of cycling wax and honey that is friendly to the bees. We want to cycle out our wax over a three (3) year period.  Old brood comb becomes black and is more susceptible to disease and pests.

So, we decided to try this type of hive.  Below is picture from a friend's backyard of 2 Warre` hives.

Thank you Malcolm Campbell for the nice picture and woodworking.

Here are some specs for you to ponder:

• Each box is about 12" by 12"
• 8 top bars per box (really light)
• We have a viewing window in the back of each box to watch the bees build down on the top bars.
• Bottom box has a screen bottom with a solid slide-in option.
• Top box is a quilt box filled with saw dust.
• When adding boxes, they are nadired instead of supered.

Nadiring versus Supering

  Supering - When beekeepers place a hive body with frames on top of the beehive, this is called supering.  Supering is derived from the word superior (thanks Michael Bush) which refers to something or someone higher in rank or above you.  Hence, when we place a box above, we are supering the hive. 

Nadiring - When we nadir boxes in a beehive, we place them below.  Think of it this way.  If something is at its zenith, it is at its top/peak.  If something is at its nadir, it is at its bottom.

How nadiring affects the operation of the beehive

In Langstroth world, we are taught that bees always move up but in Warre` world we say they go down.  Which is correct?  As usual, we need to ask the bees.  In observing them I believe both are correct.  How so?

If we look at natural honeycomb it is teardrop in shape and is built from top to bottom.

Honeycomb built on the bottom of a warre`top bar

 Honeybees seem to go to the top, (go up), but build down.  In Langstroth world we add supers believing that bees will place honey in top boxes and place brood in the bottom boxes.  In Warre` world, boxes are nadired with boxes placed on the bottom as the bees build out each box.

Harvesting Langstroth & Warre` beehives

Langstroth harvesting - The supered boxes fulled of capped honey are removed from the top of the hive.  Honey is normally removed via extraction which requires a machine to spin the frames and remove the honey via centrifugal force and gravity. The brood boxes are not touched during this operation.  So the bees live in old comb until it is replaced.

Warre` harvesting - The top box is removed and the comb is crushed and the honey strained.  Only gravity it used.  Since the hive is nadired, the comb at the top will be darker than a Langstroth hive but the brood comb will always be fresh.  Hence a natural recycling of wax in the hive just like when bees swarm and establish a new colony.

Today we visited our Warre` hive and are happy to report that are bees are building out the top bars just like Abbe` Warre` said they would.  Below are some pictures of what our current hive looks like.

Above is a view of comb being built out from viewing window in the back of the Warre` hive.

Current Warre` hive with 2 boxes and interface Langstroth nuc.

Thanks Dietlinde Zipkin for taking these great pictures

Looking down into the Warre` hive with one frame removed. See the fresh comb being built out by the bees on frame 2.

This photo is looking up at the BOTTOM of a warre` box.  Note the comb hanging down.  We believe the bees had built out 6 of the 8 bars so we nadired the hive to give them more space.  Our hope is that by the end of this season we will be able to remove the Langstroth nuc and have the hive be totally warre`

We would like to thank our friends at Center for Honeybee Research.  We purchased our nuc of bees from them this year and their quality was just fabulous.  Our bees are really building out VERY nicely.  You can see the marked queen above.  The colony seems vibrant with lots of bee activity.  Of course we are also fortunate to have a great bee yard with lots of great bee food.  If you are interested in obtaining nucs of bees, please reach out to Carl Chesick or Stuart Van Meter located in Hendersonville, NC.  When we picked up our bees, we spent the night at the Pisgah Inn and arrived the next morning to pick up our screened bees.

Here are some great Warre` links if you want to investigate more on your own:

• http://warre.biobees.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive
• http://www.warrebeehive.co.uk/component/content/article/1-latest/6-who-was-abbe-warre
• http://milkwood.net/2012/03/26/new-press-for-crushing-wild-honeycomb/

Bee Boy out.