Bee Log # 81

Beeswax: One Ounce Bar

The beeswax comes out of the molds beautifully. I made my first beauty product from the wax, mustache wax! A musician from the Phinney Farmers' Market was complaining that he has trouble buying mustache wax that he likes. I made some for him as a prototype.

Buckwheat Honey and Blackberry Honey

The two jars of honey above were harvested from the same 7 hives about one month apart. The lighter honey is blackberry honey and the darker honey is buckwheat with maybe some Japanese knotweed. We know the bees were in buckwheat because the farmer at the farm where we have our hives had planted buckwheat as a cover crop. We guess Japanese knotweed because it is blooming during August. The dark honey has a rich, fruity, plum like taste. The lighter honey has a clover and melon flavor.

Cooling Beeswax in One Ounce Molds

I invested in some beeswax molds so that I could market the beautiful beeswax that I am accumulating. When we harvest honey, we cut the wax cappings off of the frames in order to extract the honey. The wax cappings go into a solar wax melter (see earlier blog post: Bee Log 44: July 6, 2010 ). The wax is filtered through cheese cloth and collected in metal pans. I remelt the wax in a rice cooker purchased at Goodwill and pour the wax into the molds.

We will be at the Phinney Farmers' Market today, Friday, September 28 and October 5. We will be at the Queen Anne Farmers' Market on Thursday, October 11. Come taste our honey.

Bee Log 44: July 6, 2010

Solar Wax Melter

My husband built a solar wax melter. It is a box painted black inside with a window. The window is in a frame that is attached to the box with hinges. The box is setting in a wheel barrow so that it is tilted toward the sun and can be turned as the day progresses. The box is large enough to hold queen excluders which the bees are always clogging with wax.



Wax Moth Larva

One of the banes of beekeepers is the wax moth. We are processing our wax just in time because the wax has some wax moth larva in it. Up until now we have not seen this pest. You can see two wax moth larva in the above picture.


Our Garden on July 6, 2010 Two Beehives in the Background

Finally the sun has come out in Seattle. The bees are flying with intensity. The blackberry honey flow is almost over. Clover is blooming and will be a major source of honey for the next few weeks as will lavender. We were not able to be at the Phinney Farmers' Market on July 2 because there was no honey to take from the bees. We might not make this weeks market either. The bees are storing honey in the supers (top of the hive where excess honey is stored) but there is not enough capped honey to make it worth our while to extract and bottle the honey to sell. We will check again on Wednesday and make a final decision for this weeks market.