Fire Mountain Permaculture

One of the upsides of our hive catastrophe is that it provided a lot of honeycomb. After the honey was harvested, the rest was ready to be processed into beeswax. There were a few steps in the process, including the use of our home-built solar wax melter (the topic of a future post). The photo…

By

James

—

, ,

Our first beeswax

Our first block of beeswax (fork just for scale -- not for eating!)
Our first block of beeswax (fork just for scale — not for eating!)

One of the upsides of our hive catastrophe is that it provided a lot of honeycomb. After the honey was harvested, the rest was ready to be processed into beeswax.

There were a few steps in the process, including the use of our home-built solar wax melter (the topic of a future post). The photo above shows the final result.

It’s a lovely yellow colour, and hopefully pretty pure. Now we just have to work out what to do with it!

Possibilities include:

  • beeswax candles
  • lip balm
  • ointments (combined with various essential oils, etc)
  • furniture wax

Any other suggestions?

2 responses to “Our first beeswax”

  1. Gerry Heaton Avatar
    Gerry Heaton

    James, well done, impressive. I hope I get to do the same. It may have to be next year after my inspection today.

    Reply
  2. solarbeez Avatar
    solarbeez

    That is beautiful wax. Keep some to melt into your swarm bait box next year if you want to attract swarms.
    We are going through a long period of sub freezing temperatures. I looked at the temperature of the inside of my ‘weak hive.’ It read 30F. (-1C) I guess that’s a goner. 😦 I’ll be looking for some swarms next year not only for myself, but for others that I have promised to…I get the first one tho.
    Old combs, bees wax, lemon grass oil seems to be the operative words for success.

    Reply

Leave a comment