Will it Melt?

Finally here are the pictures. The container with the balls of wax with the seat cover wrapped around the pan for insulation was put in the back of the truck while I was parked at work. The third picture shows the scum left over. It is weird there is so much. The wax looked so clean before.



These two show the finished cake of wax from Friday. It is about 2 - 2.5 oz. I have done this process again and got another cake of about the same size. One more to go.


If you are interested, and since this is my historical log, here is what happened during the days:
Thursday:
11:40 softening up, the balls are flattening, but no actual melting.
12:40 soft but still not melting. I think the pot is at a point where it is radiating as much heat as it is getting. Maybe if I had a dark paper towel it would push it over the edge.
6:00 got a couple of drips so the concept is close, but not quite working.

Friday:
Today I wrapped the pot in a layer of black fabric with foam in it (an old car seat) to act as insulation.
11:20 actual melting happening! Today it is several degrees cooler than yesterday and the wax is melting before it did yesterday.
12:30 drips are coming through and most of the wax is melted! Looks like success is close.

Big Balls o Wax

The wax melting experiment didn't work. But I was gone all Sunday when it was out so I don't know if it was because my setup didn't work or it didn't get enough sun to heat up correctly. Thursday I think will be the next try. I will drive the truck to the top of the parking garage and put the pot in the bed. It should be nice and sunny and I can check on it during the day. We'll see what happens.

Wax Melting

Well I'm finally getting around to dealing with the wax cappings from honey extracting day. I looked at several web sites on solar melting and it all seems to be about the same - rinse and dry the wax, make little balls and put it on paper towels over a plastic container of water, put the whole thing in a box that has been painted black and has a glass cover, and put that entire thing in the sun. The sun should heat the box and wax hot enough to melt and as the wax passes through the paper towel it gets all the gunk filtered out, eventually solidifying again at the bottom of the container. Then at the end of the day we pop the wax out and voila! clean beeswax ready for some other task.

In the true spirit of beekeeping, where you ask anyone their opinion and it will usually end with "but you can do it anyway you want" I am doing it differently. I don't have a glass covered box handy, but I do have a nice black canning pot in which I make my jams. (Oh man we made some really good sour cherry jam this year!). And I have a plexiglass sheet that I can use as a cover. Hopefully it is close enough to actual glass to work. I am going to give it a go tomorrow and/or Sunday.

Invasion!

My hives have all been free of disease and pests until now. Last Saturday I found Small Hive Beetles in the hive at my in-laws house. Such a drag. But at least I only saw 4 or 5. The problem with the Small Hive Beetle is that its larva stage are little worms that will eat their way through the brood comb leaving a mess of the place and causing any honey in it to ferment. They are from Africa, I think, so there are no natural predators here. The most you can do is try to keep them at bay so they don't kill the hive.

So to do that I found trap plans on various web sites that use thin CD cases with a soy powder bait. There are a few varieties if you Google for them, some say to use roach poison and some say to use boric acid powder to kill the beetles. Yeah, I'm not going to put any kind of poison in my hives. And I have a ton of Megabee in the freezer still so I am using it for bait and tried coating the CD case with vegetable oil to try and trap them. Hopefully that works well or well enough. Since there were only a few beetles hopefully I have time to experiment a bit before they take over. I did squish one with my hive tool so I'm already down one! Wish me luck.