[Today’s run: none]<\/p>\n
We did some bee stuff today.\u00a0 Before church we put on our bee suits and took about 8 frames out of one hive that we have not been into for awhile.\u00a0 It was looking very good.<\/p>\n
Then, after church we filled jars with honey and started melting down some of the wax we have accumulated.<\/p>\n
Wax work is kind of interesting.\u00a0 The wax is an oil product.\u00a0 It has old honey in it and also some old husks of bee larva and various other trash.\u00a0 I melt down the wax by putting it in a pot with some water.\u00a0 The water dilutes the old honey.\u00a0\u00a0 After the wax melts it rises to the top of the water.\u00a0 Most of the husks and junk floats at the bottom of the wax layer.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I use a spoon or dipper to try to get clean wax off of the top of the pot.\u00a0 Other times I will just let it cool down at rest, then break out the wax later and dump the honey-water out.\u00a0 I can scrape off some of the junk from the bottom of the wax layer.\u00a0 Later I can remelt some of these scraped pieces and do the dipper thing.\u00a0 I also sometimes poor the melted wax and hot water through a cheesecloth to filter junk out.\u00a0 The hot water keeps the wax from forming on the cheesecloth and clogging it up.\u00a0 For the dipper work I have a tall piece of pyrex glassware.\u00a0 It is maybe 4 inches in diameter.\u00a0 I heat up the wax and water and pour it in.\u00a0 I can see the layers and that helps me dip down as far as possible but avoid the junk.\u00a0 A tall container is the best for making the layers “thicker” so that I can get out more of the wax.<\/p>\n
If I refine it a few times, I can dip off some very pure wax.\u00a0 Usually we try to get it close to that condition.\u00a0 We have some “votive” candle molds that we use to make candles with the wax.<\/p>\n
Cleanup from wax processing can be a chore.\u00a0 The easiest way to get rid of wax that has coated the inside of the pot or a stirring spoon or some such, is to heat up some boiling water in the microwave or on the stove top.\u00a0 Then either poor the water on the item or dip the item in the water.\u00a0 Wipe it off with a paper towel and it is clean.\u00a0 If you dip it you can either toss the water in the driveway or let it cool and then take off the skim of wax.\u00a0 It is a bad idea to pour hot melted wax down the kitchen sink.<\/p>\n
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[Today’s run: none] We did some bee stuff today.\u00a0 Before church we put on our bee suits and took about 8 frames out of one hive that we have not been into for awhile.\u00a0 It was looking very good. Then, after church we filled jars with honey and started melting down some of the wax […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}