Return on Investment

FINALLY! A return on my investment! I made a candle and a little block of wax out of the burr comb that I scraped out of the Thistle hive a few weeks ago. I gave it to Mom as payment for her letting me fill her backyard with bees :)

And here are the "making of" pictures I took (over the course of several days). First, of course I have to start out with my safety equipment. I've got a baking soda (because you cannot use water on a wax fire, it will explode), a fire extinguisher (for when the baking soda fails), and my cell phone (to call 911 when the apartment is on fire):

Here are my candle making supplies. I've got a strainer and some cheese cloth for straining and purifying the wax, 3 votive molds, some candle mold release spray, and some wicks. Not pictured, I have two pitchers to melt the wax in. I purchased a starter kit from Michael's, it also came with a thermometer and very basic instructions on how not to burn your house down.

 Here I have one of Mom's old crock pots (set to about 250 degrees F) with a metal pitcher inside of it with my burr comb inside of the pitcher. I figured this was safest because wax is not supposed to get above 300 degrees F and you should not melt it over an open flame.

The burr comb contained lots of bee bits and pollen, so once it had melted down, I poured it through the cheese cloth/strainer into my alternate pitcher. This worked really well to take out the larger bee bits.

To get the smaller bits of pollen and honey out, I mixed the wax with water. The debris sinks to the bottom, the wax floats on top of the water. This worked really well to get a lot of the excess honey out, but not too well on the excess pollen. As you can see, once the wax cooled, it still had a lot of pollen specks in it:

I searched online for another method of straining out gunk, and one commenter suggested using old (but clean) pantyhose. So, I put a pair of pantyhose over my strainer and it worked like a charm!

The results were this clean slab of wax (with some pollen still around the edges because I wasn't using a completely clean pitcher... though I'm note really sure how to clean the pitchers... oh well, I'll worry about that later).

I melted down my clean wax again and strained it through pantyhose one more time into my molds. I had enough for one votive and one 1/2 ounce brick of wax. I am using the pencil to hold the wax up straight.

 

Now to figure out how to clean the wax off of everything...

Feeder Failure

Last time I visited the bees, I put my Mann Lake feeder on the Thistle hive and the Brushy Mountain feeder on the Mint hive. I had the Mann Lake feeder on my hive last year and really liked it, I only bought the new one from Brushy Mountain because I needed another feeder and I was getting all of my other supplies from them. Here are my findings (result - I'm buying another Mann Lake Feeder):


Mann Lake Hive Top Feeder:
+ Comes with a super already around it so it stacks easily onto the hive
+ Has a large capacity (4 gallons)
+ The mesh in the middle is removable (if you ever need to clean it)
- There is a lot of open space in the middle of the feeder for the bees to create burr comb in.

Brushy Mountain Plastic Hive Top Feeder:
+ No space for the bees to create burr comb in
- Doesn't come with a super (adding one is supposed to create a better seal so bees don't come in the top and drown).
- Harder to pick up when there is still sugar syrup in the feeder (because the super isn't attached)
- The places where the bees access the sugar cannot be removed, they aren;t mesh so you can't see in.
- If the bees do manage to find their way into the reservoir (despite using a super to create a better seal) you end up with a sea of dead bees:

Expansion

Wow! Thistle went nuts over the last 2 weeks and built comb everywhere! Their completely empty hive body (spare 9 wax sheets and 1 frame of drawn comb) was 70% drawn (meaning they had built comb on 7 of 10 frames) and was filled with honey, pollen, and brood. Additionally, Thistle build comb all the way up into their feeder, last year's bees NEVER did that, so I guess they were just looking for more space. Here is what the bottom of the feeder looked like, where all those bees and comb is SHOULD be completely empty:

 And as expected, Thistle built a bunch of burr comb where the queen cage had been (the queen cage causes a larger than usual gap so that the bees can build unusual comb). Here is what they did on this one of the middle frames:

I cleared out all of the burr comb because it was just a mess, here is all of the wax that I collected (in a gallon baggie). I think I'll try to melt it into some candles:

Unfortunately in taking the burr comb away, there were a few casualties. I broke open a few cells that had larve in them (as you can see on top of some of the middle frames). Fortunately most of the burr comb was pretty new, so it wasn't filled with very much, only a few larve and a bit of pollen and honey:

 Mint on the other hand was VERY good, but probably only because they were slower than Thistle and didn't outgrow the space I gave them. They had drawn about 60% of their hive body and were clustered around the one frame of drawn comb that Vicky gave me:

Mint didn't really make any burr comb, overall it was a much easier inspection. I didn't spend too much time peaking around Thistle because there was so much clean up to do, but for Mint, I got a chance to inspect the frames and I did see some eggs (meaning the queen is alive and well, or at least was in the last few days). Both the feeders were completely out of syrup when I checked on them, and Mint had a smaller feeder so they must have been out of food for longer than Thistle was - which probably explains why they were much less advanced than Thistle. I ended up giving Thistle another hive body to grow into, but left Mint with just their first one:

One new thing that I tried this year was actually buying some proper smoker fuel. Last year I tried burning misc things that I found in the back yard: twigs, leaves, paper bags. It was a huge pain in the butt to keep my smoker lit, I usually ended up relighting it 5 or 6 times throughout the inspection of one hive. I bought some quick start pellets, wood pellets, and cotton fluff to see if I would have better luck - this time I went with a starter pellet and cotton fluff. It made a world of difference! I only relit my smoker once throughout the inspection of 2 hives. I'll test out the wood pellets too next time, they are supposed to have a longer burn time:

Queen Release

I went down to the hives after work today to make sure that the queens had been released. I was going to wait a week to let the bees settle down, but Vicky told me that the Queens should be out by now. I very quickly took the queen cage out of each hive (because it was a bit chilly outside) and put in two drawn frames that Vicky gave me. The bees were probably very happy to get a little bit of comb (since I didn't give them anything but plain wax sheets - it's easier for them when they have the comb already made). Here is me inspecting Thistle's queen cage:

I also put the other plastic hive top feeder that I have onto the Mint hive, you can see that it is a bit different than the other one that I have from Mann Lake, and you have to place an empty hive body over top of it to seal it. The hive top feeders are nice because you don't even have to put on a bee suit to fill them up:

Feeding

I stopped by the bees today with my friend Cliff so that I could feed the bees. Vicky fed the bees with the sugar water that they came with - but the Thistle hive had gone completely through it because they had the hive top feeder on (it's very easy for the bees to get up to the hive top feeder). The Mint hive didn't have the other hive top feeder on it, so it had a jar of sugar water on it. The bees had only gone half way through it because it is harder to get into. I put an additional cup of sugar water on that hive for the bees to get more food: