We were unable to harvest honey last year due to my illness, but we came out of the winter with some very strong hives. We also lost an above average number of hives to wax moths, but, given the circumstances, we are not beating ourselves up over that. Between those strong hives and the been exceptionally good weather for nectar this spring, we had to pull our first batch of honey mid-April because so many hives were honey bound. Luckily a friend came to visit over my spring break, and we promptly showed her how to decap frames and crank the extractor! That week yielded 2 5-gallon buckets of honey. While we usually wait until after the sourwood bloom to harvest, our hives ran out of space again before the sourwood even started – even the ones with three honey supers — so we pulled honey again last week. If the sourwood produces well, we may even pull a third batch.
It was hard work, but such a joy to work in our new honey kitchen. The concrete floor is coated with a resin finish and the walls are washable – even with a pressure washer if that ever becomes necessary! We have a commercial sink and plenty of space. For the April batch of honey, we placed the decapping station in front of the sink so that we could set the hot knives down on the draining board. Well, that didn’t work too well for those who are right-handed, and I was occasionally at risk of melting the power cord. Luckily Hubby planned well and I was able to switch to a different outlet, but reaching across to the sink was still awkward. We’d also partially blocked access to the sink, making hand-washing a challenge.
This time, we moved the honey keg down (table – front right), and set the decapping station up between it and the extractor. That worked much better. I decapped 9 frames, loaded the extractor, and then decapped the next 9 before spinning the honey out. While I spun, the knives cooled, and I was able to wash them before starting on the next batch. It was so nice not to have honey-coated handles! (That may sound obvious, but in the small spaces we had before, the workflow was even more awkward than it was in April.) We used the metal trays I have for curing soap under the hive boxes, and that helped tremendously with cleanup — the bees were quite happy to do the dishes for us!
The only problem on Friday was the extractor’s center support ring for the frames broke off in one of the sections. We bought the extractor from a lady who gave up beekeeping 10 years ago, so who knows how old it actually is. It has served us well. Hubby found the company that purchased the original manufacturer on-line and ordered a new ring, but he temporarily used two food-grade bucket lids and some food-grade screws to stabilize the section just to get us through this batch. It worked! We want to buy a motorized extractor as soon as possible, but we’ll keep this one as backup even when we decide to spend all that cash! Hand-cranking a honey extractor is a young person’s game, and this year’s harvest was a lot of work. Not that we’re complaining.
I use wax from honey cappings for craft projects like soap, lotion bars, and candles. All of the wax we process passes through multiple filters, but anything that goes on someone’s skin or into their house only gets the fresh was from the top of honeycomb.
Of course, after a record honey harvest, we have a record amount of beeswax to process. This is when I make honey soup! For the first round of processing, we simply heat up some water in a large pot (we use the one that came with a turkey frier) and dump all the cappings in there. Wax melts at a lower temperature than water boils, so it doesn’t take much heat for the wax to separate from all the other stuff — any remaining honey, and debris. You can also put your cappings into a mesh bag so that all the solids stay in one place – see this article for more information about that. Once the wax has melted, I simply put a lid on the pot and leave it to cool down. The cooled wax ends up at the top of the pot with honey and water below. I then run a knife around the top of the wax and remove it – but after the water has cooled all the way down.
Even though I don’t boil the wax and water slurry, it still warms up enough for bees to start hearing the dinner bell! However, they are far more interested in what’s cooking than in who is doing the cooking, so they are rarely in a mood to sting. Just to be safe, I wear the hat with a veil while cleaning wax outdoors. Face stings are never pleasant and bees that are overly excited by the smell of a free meal tend to get tangled up in my hair!
We’ve discussed buying a commercial wax-melter, but they are expensive and wouldn’t be here in time anyway. The big advantage would be that we simply dump everything into one tank and then draw off the layers of honey, water, and wax. This would not be honey that we’d bottle, but people do sell it as cooking honey. I’ll probably try it in some jam recipes…. We’ll take a look at just how much wax we deal with and the cost of the equipment when life slows down a little.
For this year, I am purchasing a far smaller wax melter which will make filtering and heating small batches of wax for crafts much easier. Up until now, I’ve been using a double-boiler on a hot-plate to melt wax to filter and then to use, but that is a tedious process. So the big rounds of wax that I just separated will stay as they are until the new equipment arrives and then I’ll let you know how using it to filter goes!
If you have a large piece of wax (like an 8-inch cake) and you want to break it into useable pieces, freeze it. Then put it into a strong garden trash bag and hit it with a rubber mallet. It will shatter into smaller pieces.
And if you have beeswax – they make the best candles! Check out this article to see some of the benefits of beeswax candles over less expensive varieties. I prefer to leave the ones I make unscented, but I may play around with adding some dried lavender to the wax melter to add just a hint of natural fragrance. If you see me waiting at the gate for the UPS truck to arrive on Thursday, you’ll know I just want to get started on some new candles!
Lazer Creek Apiary 