Playing with wax

For me, one of my favorite things to do is playing with the wax the bees make. For some its all about the honey but I love the wax.
Bees are amazing little creatures, and the  fact that they make so many by products is genius. Did you know that the glands of worker bees convert the sugar contents of honey into wax , which oozes through the bee's small pores to produce tiny flakes of wax on their abdomens. Workers chew these pieces of wax until they become soft and moldable, and then add the chewed wax to the honeycomb construction. Like how did they come up with that???
So when i scrape off the burr comb or cappings when taking honey, i wash it and let it dry. I throw the bits and pieces in a bucket and leave it until i get enough to melt down.
Just recently i tried a new method of melting it down. I looked at the way a solar melter works and applied it to the oven. It worked like a charm. Next year i am hoping to make a solar melter so then i can do it outside.
So basically what i did was put a oven proof dish in the oven, i added some water in the bottom of that, oh maybe a inch. On top of the oven proof dish i placed a old cooling rack (you wont be able to cool your cookies on it anymore so make sure its a old one) Then i laid a couple sheets of paper towel over top the rack and spread out the wax bits.
Place in a low oven, i normally turn the oven on to somewhere between 200 and 225 degrees. It will take a while to melt all the wax.  Once all the wax melts it filters thru the paper towel  and lands in the water. Remove from the oven and let cool til the wax solidifies. Here's a few pictures

Add water in bottom of dish

                                               

                       Paper towel filter over dish with melted clean wax floating on the water

 This is what to expect the paper towel to look like, but it depends on how clean your wax is when you start

Being frugal I hate to waste things, so after the paper towel had dried out, i broke it into pieces and we use to to start fires with. It works really good and its not gone to waste.
Have fun.

   

Bye bye summer

Well it is October 17th. All signs of summer have gone and fall is definitely here. (even hints of winter are appearing)
I have managed to blunder through another season of beekeeping with hopes of having more time to care for the bees. But with all the forest fires and extreme heat, and a really busy tourist season, the motel kept me way to busy.
With the heat and smoke I didn't really expect the bees to do as well, honey wise, as they did. Such little troopers they are.

After we got the hives ready for winter, except for the wraps, the weather turned warm again at the end of Sept. The bees were busy collecting a few different kinds of pollen. By Oct 5th the weather started to turn cooler. Lots of frosts overnight. While checking on the bees one day, we noticed fighting going on with the hive we had combined during the summer. I also noticed the odd wasp just walking right in the front door. So that afternoon we tore the hive apart and was sad to find quite a few dead bees, no queen and not much honey in the lower box. There was still lots in the super and the extra attic box which housed a few frames of honey. Most of what was left of the bees were in the attic box, tending to those frames of honey.
I was sick. Was it robbing? Guess we won't know for sure. So once again we packed up what was left and deposited the remaining bees into a neighbouring hive.
Oct 6th
Went to work making 2-8lb candy boards. James was so nice to make me extra frames this year for all the hives.
Oct 10th
Put the tarps around the north and east sides of the fence enclosures. It was such a cold windy day and was snowing like crazy. We had gotten about 3-4 inches. Jeepers I guess winter is really coming......
To be continued

Takin care of business

Oh my goodness, I swore last year I would do better and get things done earlier. But alas....here it is Sept 12 and I am so far behind I think I am first.
The good new is, the honey is done. The bad news is I am not making too much headway on getting ready for winter.
Now I am sweating bullets that the weather won't warm up enough so compress the bees down into one box. I know it will but still, I do worry.
Today however I managed to get out there and treat for mites and get the sugar syrup inside for the girls.

Sept 14
Well I finally made it.
My mum gave James a bee jacket and gloves for his birthday this year, so I had a helper. It was great.
Mother nature was on our side, even though it froze overnight last night, it warmed up during the day. So once our motel chores were done, we made a bee-line out to the bee yard and got down to business. We managed to get all 3 hives compressed into one brood box, with their deep honey super on top. I left a empty super on top of the honey, as a attic box. This will be filled with insulation later for winter. But for now, it holds the jars of syrup and pollen patties.
Even though it only took an hour to do all 3 hives, it took all afternoon and into the evening to finish. The bees don't want to leave their frames of honey so they have to be coaxed off before it cools down for the night. I learnt this last year and lost a few handful of bees cause they stayed with the frames all night and it was too cold. Poor girls.
Anyways, they say we learn from our mistakes, which leads me to think I should be a genius by now...ummmm
So for now, the bees are all set until its time to wrap them up for winter.  So over the next 2 days, I have been experimenting with making "creamed" honey. I will let you know how that goes in a couple weeks..I should know by then. I also melted down the last of the cappings, which is one of my favorite jobs.
But for now, that's it. Will chat again soon.
Bee Happy!

                                                    Bumble Bee resting on a Marigold

                                                       Beautiful piece of honey comb

The new toy

Well here it is Sept 1 and summer is still hanging in there. Tomorrow will be a fine day to check on taking the last of the honey off.
While checking the hives last week I noticed lots of frames that were partially capped. I was hoping this week they would be ready to pull. The problem is uncapped honey, if the moisture content is too high, will ferment and will not keep. The bees will cap their honey with the moisture content is down around 17%, clever little girls aren't they!
So I started reading up on refractometers. These tools read the moisture content honey, along with things.
The neat thing about a refractometer is if you check the uncapped honey in your hives and it is around 17% you can pull it and extract it. Not only does it work out good for you and saves you time, it saves time and energy for the bees. They don't have to go to all  the work of making wax and capping it. They can go back to collecting nectar or whatever their job happens to be.    
Its a win win situation.
So once the decision was made to purchase one I started to research it. They ranged from a few bucks up to 100's of dollars. It didn't make sense to me to spends tons being a non commercial beekeeper but on the other hand I didn't want to buy something that was too cheap. I settled on one that was highly recommended and was very affordable.
I tried it out tonight and it proved to be very simple to use. Tomorrow we are going out to the hives and check the uncapped frames and hopefully we can pull them and get them extracted.

                                                                   The new toy

                                                              A beautiful frame of honey

How sweet it is.

Well as usual August is like a whirlwind. Here it is the 20th already and I am so far behind I think I am first.
Its been a very unusual year. Started with a long cold winter that seemed like it was never going to end. Spring finally showed up fashionally late but showed up never the less. Then the heat came. Hot and dry and that played havoc on the forest fires which are still going strong. They say we may see the smoke until winter. We had what seemed like a couple weeks of smoke covered mountains. You could smell it. The bees weren't too impressed either. When we stood there watching them during those smokey days, it was like they were moving in slo-mo. It was bazaar.
Because we were so busy with the motel work and then the evacuees, I thought how clever I would bee if I would removed frames of during the summer, instead of all at once. It worked for a while. I took 9 frames and put them aside. They looked nice and even though it had been so hot and smokey, it appeared we may get a little for ourselves.

So a few days ago, we decided there was enough time to extract the honey. We are so not set up for honey production here at the motel but we were going to make it work. Last year we did it in the kitchen and didn't cover the top of the extractor while spinning it off. Jeepers I swear I was cleaning up honey for a month. So this year we made a cover for it (a sheet of plastic). I had also bought a 36.00 free standing laundry sink and made it into a uncapping  tub. It worked really good. Except I needed a piece of screen or perforated metal for the bottom of it to stop the cappings from going into the bucket below.

So what I did was lay an old rack out of a fridge across the top of the sink, then when I cut off the capping's they would fall thru the rack and lie on the bottom of the sink. The honey then drained thru all the mess and fill up the bucket below (which had a sieve on top of it). I also raised the back of the sink so the honey would drain. The total cost of my uncapping tub was 36.00. I got the fridge rack from the local transfer station for nothing.
Below is our very vintage 2 frame extractor. It isn't pretty but she still works fine. I do have plans on buying a new once we sell out and head back home

Also new this year is this bucket which I splurged on. I love it. It came with the gate valve and 3 filters. Once the honey is run through the finest filter it is so clear. Well worth the money. 

Well that's it for now. Chat soon.

The smokey days of summer

Holy moly, where is the summer going. One minute we are removing the winter wraps, the next we are getting ready to take off the honey.
Its been a whirlwind summer. Things have been crazy around here since the beginning of June.
Last year after having a busy summer at the motel, I didn't get the honey off till the end of August and swore I would never leave it that late again. So Aug 1st came, the rooms were cleaned, laundry was on the go and I said,  that's it, I am going to go pull some frames of honey...well at least start anyways.
So I went out and pulled 6 frames and it looked so nice. I think we will get more than I had thought.

Its been a weird summer. Because of all the forest fires in BC we were smoked in for a long time. When I would go out to the bee yard, it was like the bees were flying in slow motion. They were still going out foraging but were slow. So when I opened up the hive I was surprised.
Today I went out again, I ended up only pulling one frame. There was lots of new honey but some was not capped yet, so would imagine in this heat, it wont be long.
I got to say, our bees are pretty relaxed, even when taking honey...or maybe I am getting used to them giving me heck for opening the hive.  Because I haven't mastered the smoker yet...I don't use it.
I can't wait to get in that hive we combined and get it sorted out. Because we have been so busy, I didn't make the time to organize the hive after they got settled in. So because of my neglect...I have get it in order once the honey comes off. But all the hives seem to be doing good. I have no doubt there will be enough honey for them to eat during the winter and for us to enjoy also.

In my next blog, I will be chatting about the capping tub I am going to build on a budget and talk about our bee club meeting we are having here at the motel.
Take care, I will bee back in a few weeks.

RIP Queen Anna

May 19 2017
Note to self:
I need to check  Hive 2,  They don't seen to be as robust as they should be. All the other hives are busy with lots of bees coming  and going. Hive 2 were going through the motions but didn't seem as active as I thought they should be. I had noticed some very dark old dead bees outside the entrance so I decided tomorrow I would check it out.
May 20
So once my chores were done, I geared up and went out to do an inspection. I looked in the top box and found lots of pollen and a fair amount of nectar...that's good. However I found no brood in the top box but that was not unusual for this time of year. Once that box was done, I moved into the lower box. I found no brood.....I was sick. No brood = No queen.
I removed the bottom box and found lots of dead bees, some had been there for quite some time and the others were fairly new. Queen Anna must of been in there with the other dead.  I suddenly went in to rescue mode. I threw aside the bottom board and grabbed a fresh on, then placed the frames into a new brood box, then I opened the hive next to it and searched it until I found some capped and uncapped brood and robbed that and placed it in the lower box. I closed it up and hoped for the best.
May 21
I had decided to go in search of at least one more frame of brood, so I went into Hive 1 and robbed one from there. In about a week I should be able to see a queen cell starting so would check back then
June 1
Barb came over and we decided to check in the hive to see if we could see a queen cell. As we were looking through the hive we noticed most all the brood had hatched. But we found no queen cell. Once again we took a few more frames of brood from Hive 1 and hoped for the best. We noticed though, that hive 1 is doing awesome...they are a crazy hive, tons of bees, tons of brood and tons of attitude!  Love that hive.
June 5
 Checked in and found no sign at all of the bees in Hive 2 making a new queen. So after some discussion it was decided we were going to combine the bees with our little swarm hive (Hive 4) So before dark we went out there while most of the bees were inside, we removed the inside cover of Hive 4 and laid down 2 layers of newspaper then placed on top of that, the 2 boxes from the hive who lost their queen. We put the lids on and that was it. In a couple days the bees will have chewed through the newspaper and they will become one hive. I am told doing it this way, it gives the bees with no queen time to accept their new queen.
June 8
I can only assume the bees are all together now, today I noticed way more action than there had been. Next week we will go in and remove some of the boxes and frames and get them moved down into 2 brood boxes.  At that point we will decide if we will do a split later. I'm thinking it can wait til next year but we will see. I'm just glad we could save this hive.

Notice the newspaper still in place, this will be removed once we condense the bees into a couple boxes. The top 2 boxes was the hive who lost Queen Anna