Red and BBs home.....the adventure continues

[British Red]

I decided recently to render some beeswax. Beeswax is really useful stuff - used in candles, polish, glue, leather treatments and soap to name but a few uses. Sources of beeswax include

Worn out brood comb
Wax capings from supers
Brace comb (comb made outside frames).

Supers (honeycomb) need to be uncapped for the honey to be extracted. Every time bees clean out brood frame, it is "varnished" inside, so the cells get smaller over time - this leads to smaller bees. It is sensible to have a rolling replacement of brood comb as a result - about one a third each year. As a result of these operations, beekeepers have a small but regular supply of beeswax (or a large supply if they run enough hives)

In order to render wax get an old pan, sieve and spoon plus some muslin cloth and buckets. Nothing you use will be suitable for any other purpose in the future - so old is the key (or cheap!).

Put 2" of water in the pan and add your wax.


Brood wax by British Red, on Flickr

The dark wax you see is old, the light new "brace comb".

Heat the water gently and the wax will melt and disperse


Floating Debris by British Red, on Flickr

In the picture you see, the large white blobs are drone larvae (laid in brace comb). The black lumps are pupal linings. The dark colour in the water is all manner of stuff including pupa excrement.

The solid floating matter should be scooped up in a sieve and have the wax / water squeezed out with a wooden spoon


Scoop Debris by British Red, on Flickr

The removed material should be set aside


Slum Gum by British Red, on Flickr

This material is called "slumgum" (a new word - use it three times and its yours forever ). Its all the above mentioned stuff - but it does have its uses

If left to dry it makes a good firelighter apparently (being full of wax)
It composts very well
It attracts bees like crazy - very handy if you wish to attract swarms to "bait hives" - just smear a load inside the hive
At this stage a lot of debris will have sunk, some will still be floating. Set you sieve over a clean bucket


Ready tocoarse flter by British Red, on Flickr

Pour the beeswax and water through the sieve catching all the larger debris in the sieve.

You will end up with a brown liquid wax / water mix. The clouds you can see in it are beeswax setting


Coarse filtered wax and water by British Red, on Flickr

Now leave your bucket overnight to cool. As the wax cools and sets it floats to the surface.

This is what we see the next morning


Beeswax from first render by British Red, on Flickr

The solid material is beeswax. Remove this onto some old card to drain leaving the water in the bucket


Beeswax removed from first render showing grit by British Red, on Flickr

The water in the bucket is best poured onto your compost. It will all rot down - but also clog your drains!

If you look at the wax, the bottom half is covered in beige "grit" - this is fine debris. To remove this, we render it again. I used a smaller pan, also with 2" of water

The wax was again gently melted (you really don't want a fat fire)


Second render by British Red, on Flickr

This time two layers of muslin are used to line the sieve and I pored the water and wax into an old tall jug. This makes a narrower cylinder meaning a thicker block of wax


strainer & muslin by British Red, on Flickr


Beeswax cooling by British Red, on Flickr

After cooling you can see clear water and a thick block of wax


Twice rendered beeswax by British Red, on Flickr

There is still a thin layer of ultra fine debris on the bottom of the wax - but this can simply be scraped off.

There we have it - a block of beeswax. I'll do some posts over the winter on making leather treatment, glue, polish etc. from this wax


Rendered beeswax by British Red, on Flickr

Red

 

[Mesquite]

Nice to see how it's processed Hugh

 

[Niels]

Very interesting as usual. Thanks for taking the time

 

[British Red]

Well, we made our first sales of bee products today (2 lots of propolis sold by post to people interested in it for its medicinal properties - I can't really call it "herbal" given that it is an insect product )

We have also seen our first honey ready for extraction (we have been concentrating in breeding up our bees this year). I thought a brief post on how to tell that honey is ready to extract may be of interest.

Inspecting the "supers" showed some about 70% capped off (the white wax coating over the honey). Others were fully capped


Capped off honey by British Red, on Flickr

Notionally, 70% or more capped off indicates the bees believe the honey is ready to store. If honey is over 20% water (other than some specific types such as clover honey) it is liable to ferment and cannot be sold (although it can be fed back to the same bees). The legal sale limit is 20%, however somewhat lower (18%) is ideal.
We have been concerned to ensure that our moisture content is correct prior to extracting so have invested in a refractometer. A honey refractometer measures moisture content (if correctly calibrated) by applying a scale to the amount light bends when passing through the honey.

This is a refractometer


Refractometer by British Red, on Flickr

If you look through the eyepiece when pointing the sharp end you can see a scale (the one on the right is what we want)


Refractometer scale by British Red, on Flickr

To use it you open the lid on the end and smear some honey on the glass


Hiney on refractometer by British Red, on Flickr

Close the lid tightly and read off the moisture content


Water percentage read from refractometer by British Red, on Flickr

As you can see on this (commercial) honey, the moisture is just under 19%
.
So, having established "readiness", we need to get the bees off the super full of frames in order to take them away for extraction.

In order to do this we use a device called a "Porter Bee Escape" its like a sort of "one way door" for bees

Here you can see a Porter bee escape. It has a hole in the top for the bees to enter.


Porter Bee Escape by British Red, on Flickr

If we take it apart, we can see that on the inside, there are two "exits" made of spring steel in a funnel shape


Porter Bee Escape Disassembled by British Red, on Flickr

The bees can push through the funnel to get out - but can't open it from the outside to get back in (provided that the gap is maintained at about 3mm).

If bee escapes are pressed into the holes in a crown board (which are made the right size), the bees can pass one way through the crown board, but not the other way.


Porter Bee Escape in Crown Board by British Red, on Flickr

In order to use this, the roof, crown board and supers are removed from a hive


Brood Box and Queen Excluder by British Red, on Flickr

Any supers not ready for extraction are put back on, then a crown board with bee escapes in


Crown Board with Porter Bee Escapes by British Red, on Flickr

Bear in mind that the entrance to the hive is at the bottom, so all the bees will pass down through the bee escapes to the entrance over time - and not be able to get back. Any supers ready for extraction should therefore be placed on top of the bee escapes


Super on crown board by British Red, on Flickr

Then another crown board and the roof is placed back on


Second Crown Board by British Red, on Flickr


Roof on by British Red, on Flickr

Over 24 hours or so, all the bees will make their way past the bee escapes, and be held in the lower part of the hive. The roof can then be taken off and the supers taken away for extraction without bees!

Now people do use other methods to remove bees (especially at remote apiaries where they don't want to return two days in a row), but I think there is an elegance to the bee escape.

We will leave our bees for a while and get to extracting some honey!

Hope that's interesting

Red

 

[sandbender]

Really enjoying these bee related posts, a real trove of information, thanks for taking the time to post.

 

[British Red]

Okay - probably the last post in "beginners beekeeping" although I may add posts in the future on breeding up a new colony (nucleus) as I always like to "get back to where we started" (we bought a nuc'). Since we have used foundation, I would also like to get into making foundation from our own rendered wax so look out for that in a year or so.

Anyway....honey extracting

First tip, cover the work surfaces and floor - we use old towels on the work surfaces (which can be washed) and paper / decorators sheets on the floor. Honey is sticky and it drips!

Get your tools ready.

At its most basic - a wooden board and a bread knife or uncapping fork


Cut comb board by British Red, on Flickr

A steel uncapping tray and uncapping knife are nice - but you don't really need them


Uncapping tray by British Red, on Flickr

If you want liquid honey, a way of separating honey from wax and bits of random stuff. You can use domestic sieves, but a proper honey strainer with coarse and fine mesh is worth the investment


Two part filter by British Red, on Flickr

If you wish to retain your comb when extracting (which is good as having drawn comb increases future honey production) you will need to own or borrow an extractor. At their most basic steel ones cost £150 to £200 new for hand cranked ones.
Electric are much more


Honey extractor by British Red, on Flickr

You will also need honey buckets fitted with honey gates (a very wide tap)


Plastic bucket by British Red, on Flickr

That's the kit - lets look at two forms of extraction

Cut comb

Cut comb is the simplest for of extraction.

Get a sharp knife and make a template of the pots you want to put complete comb into. You need to have used unwired foundation to make cut comb.


Unwired comb and template by British Red, on Flickr

Cut around the template


Cutting comb by British Red, on Flickr

and pop the cut comb into your container


Cut comb by British Red, on Flickr

If you want liquid honey and don't have an extractor, you can crush the cut comb in a sieve and drip the honey into a bucket - this is of course wasteful of wax, but it works!

Liquid Honey

There are a few steps to liquid honey. The first is to remove the wax cappings that cover the liquid honey in the cells


Frame on uncapping tray by British Red, on Flickr

This can be done with an uncapping knife (shown) or an old bread knife


Uncapping knife by British Red, on Flickr

or you can scratch off the cappings with an uncapping fork


Uncapping fork by British Red, on Flickr

Then put the frames in the extractor. Mine take four - you can do two, but be sure to put them opposite one another to balance the machine when spinning


Honey extractor Loader by British Red, on Flickr

Put the lid on, turn the handle for a few minutes and the honey spins out against the walls and runs down to the bottom


Turning the extractor by British Red, on Flickr

Turn the frames around and spin the other side!


Extractor spinning by British Red, on Flickr

Then remove the empty frames to store - the bees will refill these without having to re-build the comb


Empty comb by British Red, on Flickr

When the honey gets up to the bottom of the frames (or you have extracted all your frames), put the extractor on a table or stool, and under the gate put a honey bucket with a fitted honey gate.

Put your honey strainer over the bucket


Setting up for filtration by British Red, on Flickr

The honey strainer has a coarse filter that nests into a fine filter with a gap inbetween


Fitting filter together by British Red, on Flickr

If the coarse filter clogs, you can close the gate on the extractor, clear the filter and carry on - which is handy.

Open the gate on the extractor and the honey should flow


Open honey gate by British Red, on Flickr

Bits of wax etc. will be removed


Filtered Debris by British Red, on Flickr

Your clear honey will be in the bucket


Filtered honey by British Red, on Flickr

Leave that for a few days for air bubbles to clear and pour into jars!

There you have it - honey from hive to jar!

Red

 

[Goatboy]

Wow, talk about time travel. I was sleepily reading your last post there (wonderful and informatively written as always) looking at the photographs and I was just catapulted back 20 odd years, standing in one of the old sheds on the farm, spinning combs in the extractor, the honey glistening like beads of burnished amber in the evening sun, enveloped in that pillow soft sweet aroma with some comb pieces being squeezed between my palate and tongue. Cheers Red, I feel great for that little sojourn to my past.

Enjoying this thread a lot,
GB.

 

[Skaukraft]

Oohh. The memories. I can actually feel the sweet smell of fresh honey while reading.
When I was a kid I helped out my grandfaher with the bees as often as I could. He had some 20-25 hives at the most, so it was quite some work in the season.