Liquid Gold

Success!

Being that I have this week off I am running out of things to do, besides the finishing touches on my deck. I did a little bit of work on it today, honest! I decided to finish processing my beeswax. Yesterday I had gotten it into a semi refined state, but it still had a large portion of debris in it though. Today I would use my wife's beat up old panty hose to finish the job.

I started by taking my wax disc and putting in in a pot with a large portion of water. I brought the mixture to a boil and as it was coming to a boil I set up my filtering apparatus. It was very fancy.


As soon as the wax started to boil I began to pour it through the filter. As the first bit of liquid hit my trampoline tight panty hose it decided to take a flying bum drop leap onto the kitchen floor, oddly enough it was at this exact moment that I remembered a quote from the website in which I took this filtering method from. "I do this outside. Wax is also a bear to get off of your kitchen floor and it's not something you can easily hide from your husband/wife."


No real harm done, just 10 minutes of scraping wax off the floor with a old plastic gift card. As an added bonus that section of the floor is now nicely smooth and waxed. I removed the panty hose containing what is known as "slumgum" and tossed it into the garbage, although I hear if you spread it out on some newspaper and let it dry it makes a great fire starting material.


Below lay a cloudy miso soup type liquid that I placed in the garage to harden.


A few hours later I retrieved it and was astounded by the purity, liquid gold indeed. Now I'm not entirely sure what decides how dark wax will be, if it's related to the species of bee or the age of the wax but my disc is a brilliant yellow.


I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this wax yet, it seems almost a shame to use it on my wooden frames because of the effort I went through to filter it. I have found a lip balm recipe though, so I may give that a try.

Close but no cigar

Yesterday you read about my attempted exploit into refining wax. I left the pot out in the garage to cool overnight and when I went this morning this is what I found.


It was a nice solid disc of wax but there seemed to be some debris causing discoloured veins. After I removed it from the pot it was apparent there was still a lot of debris on the bottom.




I have scrapped this off into the garbage but there are still a few large objects embedded in the wax. I have purchased a second pot from Goodwill so I will melt it down and strain it. I'll post pictures of that when I get around to it.

My troubles with wax

Greetings once again readers. Forgive me for the long period since the last post, I have been busy building our new deck after my weeks of backyard preparation.

The weather for the past few weeks has been pretty lousy and the forecast for the upcoming weeks isn't looking to great either. It seems that fall is finally upon us, barring any freak heat waves. I did do a quick check-in on the bees last week to see how they were managing. I'm happy to say they've started working on filling the 3rd box with honey but I don't think there will be enough nectar to finish the job. There aren't any major flowering crops at this time so they'll only be foraging on what little blooming plants they can find. I'll have to start feeding them so they can build up enough stores for winter. The forecast is looking good for tomorrow so I'll be heading out to do a full inspection to make sure they are free of disease and pests. The last thing you need is a hive weakened by those issues going into winter.

Today I decided to try and get my two buckets of burr comb refined down into some liquid gold. I'm not sure how much I'll get, but I need to free my buckets up so I can use them to collect more burr comb in the future. Having talked to my instructor from the beekeeping course on various ways in how to go about melting the wax, I started off by getting all the comb into my pot in a double boiler setup.


This appeared to be going well, but there wasn't enough heat to completely melt all the wax, it was hardening up on the last piece of comb I put in the pot forming a wax ice burg. All other sources I've read said you need to get a water and wax mixture boiling so I threw out the double boiler idea and put the pot directly on the stove and added some of the boiling water.


As soon as it began boiling I realized that I had an issue. I don't have any other metal vessels into which I can strain the large debris out of the wax, oh sure, I could have used one of our nice cooking pots but not if I wanted to sleep in a cozy bed tonight.

I've decided I'll just put the mixture out in my garage for the night to see how well it separates and hardens on it's own. I may have to melt it down again to strain it but I don't have any plans on using it for candles or beauty products so if it's not 100% clean it's not a big deal. I'll post a picture tomorrow of how well the separation went. In the mean time I'm off to the Good Will store to see if I can get some cheap metal vessels.

Everyone Needs Their Own Space

So there was a very cool observation during my last inspection and a great learning experience. As I was inspecting the middle box I noticed that a foundationless frame I had pulled out was not completely drawn out. It looked a little something like this, forgive me for my lack of MS Paint skills.

My first thought was that it was normal, the bees just hadn't gotten around to drawing the comb all the way down to fill out the entire frame. However, while I was sliding it back into the box I noticed a very large piece of burr comb on the frame behind. It appeared to be drawn onto the outer frame and I was frustrated because I thought I had fixed this problem by adding a 10th frame. Upon closer inspection thought it was actually drawn upwards from the top of the frame below, and the outer frame was just fine. After some cursing I realized I would have to remove the middle box in order to cut this comb out. It was either that or somehow reach my hand down in between frames. I wasn't planning on getting that far down into the hive, but it had to be done. So why did they create this comb?

I am quickly learning about the importance of "bee space". This is what Lorenzo Langstroth discovered in 1852, the space in which two bees can move past each other back to back, 1cm. This is the space between two drawn frames of comb, any more space results in burr comb as the bees try to ensure this bee space. The problem of foundationless frames is that they don't really offer any sort of guide for the bees leaving them to their own devices, resulting in some very unexpected architecture. Because I had failed to properly line up the frames from box to box, the bees fixed the bee space on their own. There are actually frame spacers you can buy that will ensure the frames between boxes line up vertically and I am starting to wonder if I should have invested in some of these.

As you can see, the foundationless frame allowed open space for the bees to build comb both up from the frame below and down from the paint stick guide on the upper frame. Because these didn't actually line up at the point in which they would have joined it caused both to stop. The top frame looks incomplete because the large shark fin shape comb filled the rest of the space below.

All in all a new lesson learned and something to keep in mind when I add new boxes, maybe I will even purchase a few frame spacers to add next season.

Busy as a...well, you know

Man have I been a busy boy for the past week or so. I've been trying to get our backyard ready for some deck construction this upcoming weekend so I haven't had much free time to blog.

A few days ago I headed out to the hive to do a quick inspection to see if the frame feeder was empty and to check on the progress of the 3rd super I added. The feeder was bone dry so I removed it, however the bees hadn't made any progress on drawing comb on any of the frames. Being that I wasn't doing a real inspection I figured I'd save deeper analysis for later.

Today was a gorgeous day, hot and sunny without a trace of wind. I packed up all my gear and headed out to see how the bees were doing. Activity around the hive was looking good, I always take time each visit to watch the bees behaviour coming and going from the hive. A lot of beekeepers will tell you that you can always tell if there are any issues in the hive by what is going on at the front entrance. My girls looked just fine, in fact they're working hard to keep the house cool. Bees regulate the temperature in the hive all by themselves. If it's too cold they will huddle together and vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat and if it's too hot they will use their wings to force air through the hive. Here you can see the bees lined up in a row fanning their little wings to keep the air flowing, it was the same up at the top entrance with the exception that the bees were facing the other way. Blow air in one entrance, suck it out the other. Smart creatures indeed.


Fanning air out of the bottom entrance.


Fanning air into the top entrance.

The bees had started drawing comb on the new frames, there were even a flew places where the honey was capped. Once the bees have gathered enough nectar they will use their wings to fan the nectar so that it loses moisture and when it finally reaches the proper viscosity they will cover the cell with wax. When I moved into the box below I was extremely happy to see that the outer most frame was completely capped with honey, there was a small patch of pollen at the bottom but mostly honey. Bees always build their nests in a ball shaped pattern, the core of the ball is where they raise brood and as you move towards the edge they store pollen and then finally honey. The outer most frames are usually solid honey. This layer of honey also serves as insulation in order to keep the brood nest at the correct temperature to raise young.


Outer frame fully honey, and a small bit of pollen at the bottom.

As I moved towards the center of the box I found solid capped brood that was topped by capped honey. In the picture below you can get a sense of how the ball shape forms. The top of the frame is covered in capped honey, and as you move down you see the different shades of yellow pollen, finally the capped brood goes to the very bottom. If you imagine this as the upper cross section, the capped brood would continue on the frame below in the lowest box. The laying pattern of this queen isn't stellar as there are a few missed cells with no capped brood. Overall not a great concern because a higher percentage of the cells did have eggs laid in them.


A visual cross section of the "brood ball".

I was very tempted to take one of the outer frames of honey to come home with, but I decided against it. The bees are doing a fine job and I imagine they will probably be able to fill up the top box with honey by the end of August. I was speaking with Mario and his neighbour to the south has an Alfalfa field. Alfalfa has two blooming periods because it grows so well and gets cut down after the first bloom. Turns out the second bloom will be starting within the week. With any luck my bees will be working their little hearts out to gather some stores for winter and maybe, just maybe, some excess I can keep for myself. I really don't want to steal everything because I think it's best for bees to eat honey over winter as apposed to sugar water feed. As I read on the bee forums, "Until you have a colony of bees survive it's first winter you are a bee haver, not a beekeeper." Here's hoping.

The Lazy Man's Hobby

Beekeeping has often been quoted as "The Lazy Man's Hobby" and it's really quite true. If you only have a few hives and you take a minimalistic/organic approach there really isn't a whole lot for you to do. You simply check the hive every 10 days or so to make sure the bees aren't having any issues with disease or space constraints. There is much more work to be done during fall and spring than winter and summer, but most of the time you are just leaving the bees alone. This leaves a lot of downtime that needs to be filled.

I've spend my time reading the bee source forums, a great resource to all things beekeeping. Any question you may have will quickly be answered by beekeepers all over the country and there are countless threads in which you can just read to learn more about bees. I've added the link on my side bar if you wanted to check it out!

I've also been thinking about what I can do to promote urban beekeeping here in Edmonton. I haven't really heard much from the city developers my counsellor got me in touch with other than "we're looking into it." While my original train of thought was to try to get beekeeping legalized, which will eventually happen judging from other cities around the world, I have thought of a great plan to get bees into the city that avoids the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). I would call it "Buzzing With Business" and it would be a program that would allow local business with accessible flat rooftops to have a hive. My main issue is that I would still need to get the city on board to provide permissions because quite frankly it would be hard to get businesses on board if it was illegal for them. If enough business signed up it would allow for training of people who wanted to learn about beekeeping as I wouldn't be able to manage all the hives. The best part is the hives would be out of site and out of site = out of mind. After a couple of years pass without incident it would provide valuable evidence to the city for legalizing beekeeping.

As for my other projects I'm still really keen on getting some Newbee TV episodes filmed and edited. I would love some input from my readers though! I need episode ideas and as it will be focused towards new beekeepers/people who want to become beekeepers, what sort of things would you like me to cover? Post below in the comments!

I will be heading out to the hive tomorrow if the weather is nice, I'll post up with some pictures so everyone can know how my bees are doing!