{"id":2876,"date":"2012-08-30T09:47:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T14:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2012-08-30T09:49:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T14:49:30","slug":"wax-processing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=2876","title":{"rendered":"Wax processing"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: rest day]<\/p>\n

Our beekeeping method involves taking frames out of the hive, cutting out the honey-filled comb, squeezing out the honey.\u00a0 We put the drained comb\/wax in a container for later processing.<\/p>\n

I’ve been slow in getting my waxed processed recently, so we have had some wax moths and ants get into it.\u00a0 That’s an ugly picture.\u00a0 But today I finally got out the old dutch-oven and hot plate and dumped in a bunch of the junk wax that we have lying around.<\/p>\n

I melt the wax with a couple of inches of water in the pot.\u00a0 Water dilutes any remaining honey.\u00a0 Wax is waterproof and it melts at a temp less than boiling water.\u00a0 Honey is water soluble.\u00a0 The rest of the junk is dirt and trash which can be mechanically filtered.\u00a0 So, hot water and cheesecloth are the tools.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When the water starts to get warm, bubbles of clean wax will come up to the surface.\u00a0 I stir around the wax and junk (sticks, bee husks, dead bees, wax worms, etc. etc).\u00a0 Eventually it starts to melt. \u00a0 It all forms a sludge.<\/p>\n

The wax turns into a paste.\u00a0 Then gradually it clears up and you have “layers”.\u00a0 The water and honey will go to the bottom.\u00a0 The wax will go to the top.\u00a0 Junk will float in the wax at various layers.<\/p>\n

I used some cheesecloth\u00a0 (honey work seems to require lots of cheesecloth!) to filter out the big chunks as I poured off the top of the pot into a large glass measuring cup.\u00a0 I could have gone further but my sludge had a lot of junk in it and less wax as you get toward the bottom.\u00a0 I decided to toss the rest out.<\/p>\n

I then cleaned up the pot by boiling some water in it and getting the wax and sludge remains to melt again.\u00a0 I wiped it out with paper towels.<\/p>\n

Here is my product.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When it is completely cool I will put the measuring cup in some very hot water to loosen the wax.\u00a0 I’ll dump out the honey-water.<\/p>\n

There is still quite a bit of junk in this wax.\u00a0 I’ll add it with some other and try to refine it at least once more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: rest day] Our beekeeping method involves taking frames out of the hive, cutting out the honey-filled comb, squeezing out the honey.\u00a0 We put the drained comb\/wax in a container for later processing. I’ve been slow in getting my waxed processed recently, so we have had some wax moths and ants get into it.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","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=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2880,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions\/2880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}