Keeping bees is, for me at least, a normal thing for a gardener to do. It is compatible and part of the big, gardening picture I feel. I mean, bees are a part of the gardening scene, whether it be veggies or flowers that you grow. The bees, butterflies and and other pollinators are always present. They have their goals and we have ours...but we work alongside each other and we help each other. Perhaps not expressly, but at the end of the day it is a sort of symbiosis--the pollinator and the gardener. When I began being concerned about the future of pollinators. I started off filling the flower garden with bee-friendly bloomers. What we call, "drachtplanten". Plants that are favourites of pollinators and honey bees in particular. Plants that offer pollen and/or nectar. In the end, planting my garden full of drachtplanten was not enough, I wanted to go a step further and actually be the custodian of a few hives. I have been so happy that I did that...and that I COULD do it. Beekeeping is not for everyone, for various reasons; however, for those that can it is rewarding in many ways. The bride did not take any courses and is not whole-heartedly into the beekeeping thing, but she does help me. Now and then, she pays the price with little prick or two when she doesn't wear her protective clothing. Working together in the bees makes the work go more quickly and she watches my 6. It is a participation for which I am very grateful. She also takes and gives frames and instruments when necessary. Aside from the things she does from the sidelines, she also has some very good ideas. Good gardening ideas, but also good bee ideas. We have now arrived at the beginning of today's posting subject--the making of a wax melter. Lots of the larger beekeepers around here melt large quantities of wax to sell to various clients. I am small-time and thus have never considered going through all the trouble of melting wax. I just gave it to my old mentor--he DOES sell it to this group of female hobbyists who make hand creams and so forth. This year I have had a large number of dark frames that had to be replaced. My choices were to use the club's electrical steam wax melter. It is bulky and heavy...annnnnnd of course after using it, I would have to clean that beast. The other choice was to give my frames to my mentor...but there were so many, I really hated to bother him with it. As the old frames began to pile-up, I still had no really good solution. I contemplated buying one. A basic one is not really expensive. But then one evening my partner strolled in with her tablet and said, "Take a look at this". It was a series of YouTube vids about making one's own wax melter. Well, you know what...they are not all that difficult to make. They can be really rudimentary and still work. We talked about it and looked at some more vids and at the models for sale here. We talked about what we had that we could use and what we needed. We had an old cooler but we would have to go to the second hand store to look for more bits. We also had a largish, broken piece of glass to cover the thing with. There were a couple of things that we would still have to think about though...like the angulation to the sun and how to prevent the melting tray from sliding down and covering up the receptical. We also needed a black tray or cookie sheet or something. We did find one, and although a bit too small, it was the best we could find. It was oké but what it didn't have was holes for the melted wax to drain through into the cake form below. The metal was far too thick for me to bore through, so we went out to the industrial area and whilst trawling the streets, my partner spotted an auto chassis workshop. She sprung out and disappeared into the darkness of the shop. After a while she emerged and asked for the pan. She said that there was a rough old dude in there that would look at the pan and see. When she re-emerged, she emerged with a grin and showed the pan. She said that not only did the crusty old dude drill the holes, but also took the burrs off the underside. That was a nice touch and safety-wise, thoughtful. She got his name (Bart) and we will take him a potje of honey when we sling it ...tomorrow or the next day. Now then, we took out the old cooler out. My bride found some bricks and put them in the bottom for elevation. We began with black plastic bin liners. We used these to line the inside black in order to hold the heat. We picked up a silicon cake form to catch the melted wax in. This, so that the hardened wax could be removed easily--it wouldn't stick. I will tell you right now, the prototype is not a pretty thing to see, or is it? Let me draw your attention to the fine detail work of the twine retaining system. The attractive colour of the tastefully faded orange melter's lid, and for those who like to live dangerously-- the challenging sharp lines of the plate glass covering...hand-broken for the authentic rustic look. The rust-coloured carriage is not only beautiful for the eye to see, but also has the handy attribute of being mobile. The inclined frontal aspect of the carriage lends itself to the correct adjustment of the sun-to-melter angulation. All-in-all what we have here is a functional and excitingly interesting object that not only melts your beeswax but also keeps you on your toes. If you are not on your toes when operating this device, you could well loose them! Well, in the foto above you can see the first frame that we tried out. In the following foto you will see that it is beginning to melt, falling down onto the receptical. Woah! --This is looking successful to me. Here below you can see the wax that came out of the first frame. It was a jumping up and down and high fives all round moment. The brown stuff that you saw on the frame above does not melt. It is cocoon material that was inside the cell, the wax melted from around it and left the "skeleton". This stuff is crispy and seems to be lighter than air. It is organic and can just be thrown onto the compost bin, or used to ignite fires for a BBQ or to start up the bee-smoker. Here is the first block of wax we melted, it is ~½ kilo. So far, we have two of these...and a few more frames to melt. We worked on the the melter a bit--we fixed-up the inside and lined it properly. We got a smaller piece of glass (with no sharp edges). We also have a mirror which we can reflect down into the melter to potentiate the sun's energy. It looks a tad tidier, doesn't it. The small white yoghurt bucket has some cap and frame scrapings and the larger one is what I put the melted out frame cells into. We may work on this further, but it seems to be functioning well enough at the moment. We still need to process the wax further to make it cleaner and nicer. It needs to be up to a certain standard before we can sell it. We won't be doing that until we have done all the melting though. Another good idea from the Bride.
2-T-- Yes I like the smell of wax as well. It was such a surprise that the make-shift melter actually worked so well. i shall have to purify it a bit later when it is cooler.
