Beeswax and Bee Rescue

 When I'm not sewing or doing mom things, I occasionally deal with honeybee things.

 This past weekend I filtered out my beeswax.   For candles and cosmetic uses, it needs to be as clean as possible.  I started out by melting it in a crock pot purchased from the thrift store for this purpose.

 After melting and filtering, I poured it into aluminum loaf pans to cool.  You could literally see it cooling.

Four loaves of wax - about 5 pounds.


Also related to bees - by word of mouth, I was contacted by a lady who had wild bees in her milk shed.  She is selling her place and wants the bees rescued.



   This is me cutting a larger hole in the ceiling to try to find them. They weren't up there.

They were in the walls!   This is a picture looking up, those are combs hanging down.

 Here they are!

So the 13 combs in the picture above were mostly pollen and honey - no brood or live bees.  The above picture is pollen filled comb.

This picture is honey in the comb.

This is what a cross section of pollen comb looks like.  The bees pack in the pellets of pollen in layers, pushing it in with their heads.  This is the food for baby bees.

This story isn't actually done, because I have to go back and find the rest of the bees.  It was a pretty chilly day and I needed more/better tools to open up more walls, so I am going to go back when things warm up and the bees are flying so its easier to find them.

Stay tuned!