Over the course of the beekeeping season I tend to accumulate a reasonable quantity of beeswax and today had been put aside to process it. This is not a job I enjoy. It is messy and there is a significant amount of work to produce perfect, yellow ingots of wax.
In its raw form beeswax is comb; brood comb, brace comb or honeycomb. The comb is generally contaminated with honey, pollen, bee larvae, their faecal matter and pupal cases and the older the comb, the more contaminated it is. Old brood comb is black from the accumulation of debris over time.*
So, this morning I settled in the garage, spread sheets on the floor and started to dismantle a dozen old brood combs. In no time I was covered in wax, squashed larvae and smears of honey...
Oh, and I had a heap of comb to process. I do this using an old rice cooker. About a pint of boiling water is added to the cooker and it is switched on. The comb is gradually added and within twenty minutes I have a gently bubbling mass of black pupal casings. This is poured through a sieve in to a bucket and is left to cool. A few hours later I am left with a reasonably clean disk of wax floating on a soup of water, pollen and honey. The disk of wax is rinsed and set to one side.
I repeated this process three more times and I ended up with a reasonable quantity of beeswax that will be ready for the next steps tomorrow.
3lb 3oz cylinder of beeswax |
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* It is good practice to change the brood combs every couple of years to minimise the bacterial and viral load in the hive.
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Hi,
I have no idea who reads this stuff, so it would be lovely to hear from you, especially if you like this stuff..
All the best
Badman