My great aunt would leave a little honey in the beeswax when she made candles. “Sweet candles” she called them, to clear the air in a sick-room or to get rid of strong odors when a house has been shut up too long. It’s a sensory memory from my childhood.
I am ever so sorry you lost your hives. I can suggest these ideas to use your wax. 1. Cut inch wide strips of fabric, coat with wax and use as a bandage wrap. It works well on fingers. 2. If you have a leaky window, use those same bandage wraps to fill the gap and prevent drafts. 3. Granny waxed a flour sack to make it waterproof. It lasted for years. 4. A soothing diaper cream can be made with wax, oil and calendula. Your honey looks rich and flavorful. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for sharing. Your pianist friend makes for a lovely addition to your video content.
The piano is so calming along with being beautiful. I felt sorry for you knowing how hard it would be to clean up the utensils covered with the wax but also knew how nice it would smell! Such lovely videos, so happy you just passed by my sight.
Take your white filter cloth and hang it in the shed with all your hand tools. When you’re finished with them wash the dirt off then rub it down with the wax cloth. Keeps them from rusting.
I also bought these pricey yoghurts primarily for the containers! But the yoghurt is delicious and my little boy loved it. 10 years later, I still have the containers and many delicious pots de crème and panna cottas have been made in them.
Yes the new brand from Walmart bettergood has the most delicious obe I have ever has called strawberries and cream greek yogurt. A few fresh strawberries and is dessert.
Don’t forget to use some of your wax mixed in a little mineral oil for your cutting board conditioner. I also use it on my knives with wooden handles. Smells fantastic and does and excellent job moisturizing. You guys are my heroes.
Every time you guys upload a longer video it feels like such a treat. ☺️ As always this was so relaxing and informative, thank you for the effort and the sincerity! 🐝 PS. Congrats on reaching Week 15!!! 👏🏻
you can make soap from beeswax, too. You can't use the cold process method as the wax requires higher temperatures to saponify, but as an addition in hot process soaps it's awesome and makes some very nice and hard bars. Add a bit of honey for the most wonderful foamy and moisturizig soap you've ever had. (honey should be used with caution in cold process soapmaking as well, as it heats up the soap batter, but in hot process it fares very well, as long as you add it after saponification!)
Another delightful glimpse into your idyllic life. The messy honey harvesting process would be easier if you invested in a few inexpensive tools. A metal tool for scraping the cappings off the combs. 4 or 6 gallon plastic honey buckets with proper gate valves for filling jars, and one or two different honey sieves to fit on top, would delete several steps and lots of stickiness. Anyrhing still sticky can be left outside in a tray for the bees to clean up! They're great recyclers. Do you make mead as well?
Beeswax, jojoba oil and sheabutter makes for really good and healthy lipbalm. The beeswax gives it a nice honey like smell as well. Never had a better lipbalm.
You should make some medicinal balms with the beeswax. Like a calendula balm for eczema or rashes, or plantain balm for bruises and wounds. You can also use it to make moisturizers!! Use the tallow, beeswax, and rose water together for a great smelling face cream
Pie salve for wound healing, deodorant and more is great with he bees wax as well. Equal parts pine sap, coconut oil (or any healthy oil or tallow) and a little bees wax to stiffen the salve. Double boil for a few hours to infuse and pour into containers. The best!
This was probably the most satisfying video I've ever watched. Something about honey and beeswax is just SO beautiful! This will be my first year keeping bees and I'm so excited!!
I was looking at the title and looking into her eyes and realizing what a cool thing they’re doing and thought 💭 Why am I not comment and liking all the videos so it will get more viewers? What a way of life it would be if people only had to grow food and raise animals.
You can always use some of the leftover wax in a number of skin salves. It’s one of the main ingredients in my favorite sore muscle salve. You could also use it in a number of skin care products. I’ve also seen another RUclips channel I watch on historical shoemaking use beeswax to help her make shoes.
Hope you find out what happened to your bees 😢 also these videos are incredible, they’re educational and relaxing and definitely aspirational. Appreciate you guys!
I have never heard anyone offer sliding scale for someone on assistance. How wonderful, to offer that as your course could really impact those in a life saving and changing way. From survival to thriving. Thank you so much for being thoughtful and may it bring abundance to you for.your kindness
After extracting the honey I put everything I used (utensils and beeswax) outside so the bees get to clean every bit of honey and it's not wasted. It takes a few hours but to me every drop of honey is worth saving 😊
Such an awesome and educational video. I have been hankering to do some beekeeping, but I have to get over the price of a swarm trap and hive. I love how you showed straining your beeswax without using a honey extruder. It’s great to know that you can also use the honey water from the process so nothing is wasted. I have heard that when Mary Kay Ash started her cosmetic company, her first product was inspired by a hide tanner who had lovely skin from the product he used to soften his hides. Thank you for sharing your journey with us every week.
I'd love to see how you made the wicks--that's right up my alley! I make wraps and candles too, and I also use beeswax for lip balm, salve, soap. Thanks for another great video!
One of my favorite natural snacks is to stick a hunk of honeycomb in the freezer! I'll use a spoon get a frozen chunk and chew it. The honey turns into an almost taffy consistency and it's fun chewing on the wax!
every tool for the garden needs up keep and bees wax is great not just for the wood handles but the metal so you dont have rust as fast in colder/wet places( for the car people its great to give a shine to tiers after cleaning /as well as the dash ) wax is great for cheese making too you can coat it and the wax will keep the cheese fresher for longer....... man bees on a small homestead is so useful......and yummmmy
Would highly recommend crockpots as they are the best for melting wax. Low constant temp and can be done anywhere you have a flat surface near an outlet! Thank you for the tip about using empty frames to increase the amount of wax per hive as I am far more into beeswax then honey!
Ive just had my first experience with bees, im renovating a home, that had to have hives removed from its floors, i got a few jars of honey from it. Really amazing experience, now im very curious in the whole process, cant wait to get my own hives someday and make it a hobbie, cool video so many uses!
SWEET! Just found your channel today which is BEE-utiful news, as we are starting our beekeeping adventure this year! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your friend's lovely music.
I'm very sorry about your bees. :( Have you guys ever thought about reaching out or watching Fredrick Dunn? He is a well known bee keeper in PA. Btw thank u. This was a very therapeutic video.
Same! The Syrian version that I grew up with (baklawa) had rose water syrup instead of honey, but we might have to start making the Greek version now that we have so much honey 🙂
I highly recommend insulating your hives in the future. More research is coming out that hives in trees are well insulated and clustering is a survival technique, not a natural state for bees in the winter. That cluster looked small. How were your mite checks? What treatments were done? In the future I'd also recommend getting VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) bees. I can email you some rec's for people locally.
I rinse the crushed wax with water to get the leftover honey off, put the wax in a pot ontop of a vegetable steamer lined with cloth. Then I stick it in the oven at 170° so it can melt through the strainer and into the pot!
Have you ever considered using a weight to weigh down the crushed honeycomb while it's going through the first strainer? I think it might help extract more honey to do so, and you'd have a little cleaner wax leftover to render!
The issue with Langstroth frames in horizontal hives, they are short vertically to force the bees to put the honey that they normally would keep around their brood into the next frame above. They are made to squeeze every last drop of honey from the bees, which is far from ideal for the bees.
Nice Video, as always :) As to your lost hives: Im an Beekeeper, and have some points: If you have not found any signs of an american foulbrood infection, then the most likely cause of the collapse is the varroa mite, did you treat the hives against those? Oxalic acid and formic acid are the most reliable options to do so. Typical signs of an hive that died to the mite would be an nearly bee free box in the end. Another reason may be that the bees could not reach the honey, that would be the most likely case if you found a lot of dead bees (the majority of the hive) in the bottom of the box (this can happen even if there is plenty of honey in the box) As a side note, are you swapping out old, dark combs in the brood nest? That helps to keep the hives heathier, but tends to be more difficult in boxes in your hive style Hope that helps and you could understand what im trying to say, english isnt my first language :D
Thanks for the info! There was no sign of foulbrood or varroa and the dead bee ball was on a comb that had plenty of honey so we’re stumped. We think maybe it was a moisture thing because we built the bee box ourselves and I worry that we didn’t design it to have the right amount of airflow that they need in the Winter
I would put a metal base on the bottom of the wick because once it burns down to the bottom, the wick will fall over prematurely without the metal, decreasing the life of the candle. It will burn longer with a wick base.
How sad about the hives, but I would have been more concerned if there was fresh honeycomb and Jordan wasn’t snacking on it. That’s tantamount to a crisis! 😂 My own sweetie has a big sweet tooth as well, so we both enjoyed this newest video. 👍🏻
i weigh the residual wax/honey mix then wash the honey out with as little of measure warm water as possible then weigh the washed wax so I know how much honey is in the water. Then I weigh the wax and know how much honey is dissolved. when doing a full batch i add the remainder towards 7kg of honey and too it with water to 25l in a carbuoy.then I use mead yeast and let it ferment under airlock for min 2month, decant and keep fermenting/keeping it. the yeast will die off around 18% alcohol. then i bottle it and if you you can keep it for a long time and it gets better by the year. of course you can make any fraction of the above as long as you keep the ratios.
Hello, I seen in another video that you did the crush and strain method for extracting your honey. I did this as well, but now I'm finding it hard to clean my foundations. How did you guys clean your foundations before putting them back into the frames and then coating them with wax before giving them back to the bees? I have searched all over the internet and asked my bee group and no one can tell me. I do not want to use bleach, can you please share what you guys did? Thanks so much
Lovely video. Sorry if you've already been told but you shouldn't leave the queen excluder on over winter as the bees won't leave the queen so will starve if the food stores are beyond the excluder.
Did you do something different with your hair? It looks amazing. Im not sure if its the color or the way it frames your face, or both but you look beautiful
Oh interesting, I just got into bee keeping and heard local ones tend to be more hardy. If you guys find out what happened I’d be interested in hearing an update! Also thanks for sharing the honey and beeswax process, it’s helpful for a newbie like me :)
I have a theory as to what may have happened to your bees. It looks like the hives that died out were both horizontal hives that have the frames going perpendicular to the direction the winter cluster would be travelling. These sorts of hives, while very practical for the beekeeper, tend to not perform very well in cold temperatures. Due to the way the comb is arranged, it can happen that, during a particularly cold bit of time, the cluster doesnt manage to get to the other side of a frame, where there is still honey, meaning they starve centimeters away from stores. Obviously, I am basing this off of very little information, so I could be entirely wrong, it is just my best guess given what I could see.
I would search "bee poop". When the weather is too cold, bees cannot eliminate by doing a "cleansing flight". Often bees will hold onto the poop and get sick. The more pure the honey (sugar wise), the less they need to eliminate. I've heard of beekeepers supplementing their bees corn syrup during winter months to help with this problem.
There was no sign of mites. We let them build natural comb which means their cells are slightly smaller than wax foundation and that makes it harder for mites to fit in there with the larvae
This is so interesting. I'd love to play around with beeswax but have no inclination to actually keep bees. I'll have to see if it can be bought and if so, if it's really beeswax.
If you bought the yogurt for the container, then you really bought a container that came with some free yogurt!
This is how I will think of every purchase I make from now on 🫡
You can use lids and seals for Weck jars with those to can with. Size small, I think.
My great aunt would leave a little honey in the beeswax when she made candles. “Sweet candles” she called them, to clear the air in a sick-room or to get rid of strong odors when a house has been shut up too long. It’s a sensory memory from my childhood.
I am ever so sorry you lost your hives. I can suggest these ideas to use your wax.
1. Cut inch wide strips of fabric, coat with wax and use as a bandage wrap. It works well on fingers.
2. If you have a leaky window, use those same bandage wraps to fill the gap and prevent drafts.
3. Granny waxed a flour sack to make it waterproof. It lasted for years.
4. A soothing diaper cream can be made with wax, oil and calendula.
Your honey looks rich and flavorful. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for sharing. Your pianist friend makes for a lovely addition to your video content.
Thank you so much for those great suggestions 🙂
The piano is so calming along with being beautiful. I felt sorry for you knowing how hard it would be to clean up the utensils covered with the wax but also knew how nice it would smell! Such lovely videos, so happy you just passed by my sight.
Take your white filter cloth and hang it in the shed with all your hand tools. When you’re finished with them wash the dirt off then rub it down with the wax cloth. Keeps them from rusting.
There are lots of fabulous lip balm recipes that use beeswax as the main ingredient.
I also bought these pricey yoghurts primarily for the containers! But the yoghurt is delicious and my little boy loved it. 10 years later, I still have the containers and many delicious pots de crème and panna cottas have been made in them.
Yes the new brand from Walmart bettergood has the most delicious obe I have ever has called strawberries and cream greek yogurt. A few fresh strawberries and is dessert.
Do you heat them in the oven?
Don’t forget to use some of your wax mixed in a little mineral oil for your cutting board conditioner. I also use it on my knives with wooden handles. Smells fantastic and does and excellent job moisturizing. You guys are my heroes.
Cool. Same goes for wooden countertops then eh?
Oooo cool. Thank youu
You can also use the wax for book binding thread and macrame art. Just a thought.
Also thank you for sharing the process.
This is one of my favourite videos of yours. It was peaceful, educational, and enjoyable in a really cozy way. Thanks for sharing!
I can smell that honeycomb through the screen.
My parents had hives when I was a kid. I loved that smell
Every time you guys upload a longer video it feels like such a treat. ☺️ As always this was so relaxing and informative, thank you for the effort and the sincerity! 🐝 PS. Congrats on reaching Week 15!!! 👏🏻
you can make soap from beeswax, too. You can't use the cold process method as the wax requires higher temperatures to saponify, but as an addition in hot process soaps it's awesome and makes some very nice and hard bars. Add a bit of honey for the most wonderful foamy and moisturizig soap you've ever had. (honey should be used with caution in cold process soapmaking as well, as it heats up the soap batter, but in hot process it fares very well, as long as you add it after saponification!)
My 3 years old loveeees honey and this video was à fabulous way to show him how beautiful the process is ❤
The first ingredient in the foot balm I buy from the farm to table group we belong to is beeswax. Works fabulous on my heels.
There is something so appealing and soothing about your videos…the step by step processes are enjoyable to watch!
I always love the Moo cameos! what a sweetheart ❤
Another delightful glimpse into your idyllic life.
The messy honey harvesting process would be easier if you invested in a few inexpensive tools. A metal tool for scraping the cappings off the combs. 4 or 6 gallon plastic honey buckets with proper gate valves for filling jars, and one or two different honey sieves to fit on top, would delete several steps and lots of stickiness.
Anyrhing still sticky can be left outside in a tray for the bees to clean up! They're great recyclers.
Do you make mead as well?
Beeswax, jojoba oil and sheabutter makes for really good and healthy lipbalm. The beeswax gives it a nice honey like smell as well. Never had a better lipbalm.
You should make some medicinal balms with the beeswax. Like a calendula balm for eczema or rashes, or plantain balm for bruises and wounds. You can also use it to make moisturizers!! Use the tallow, beeswax, and rose water together for a great smelling face cream
That’s actually very similar to what we usually do for skin balm 🙂
Pie salve for wound healing, deodorant and more is great with he bees wax as well. Equal parts pine sap, coconut oil (or any healthy oil or tallow) and a little bees wax to stiffen the salve. Double boil for a few hours to infuse and pour into containers. The best!
Cooling wax looks cool.
Fascinating how much you can do with a little bit of resources and plenty of ingenuity. I admire you. Thanks for sharing. Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪.
I would watch that honey rain as an ASMR relaxation video. Glorious!
This was probably the most satisfying video I've ever watched. Something about honey and beeswax is just SO beautiful! This will be my first year keeping bees and I'm so excited!!
Those time lapses are very cool! 😍 Cheers xxx
I was looking at the title and looking into her eyes and realizing what a cool thing they’re doing and thought 💭 Why am I not comment and liking all the videos so it will get more viewers? What a way of life it would be if people only had to grow food and raise animals.
You can always use some of the leftover wax in a number of skin salves. It’s one of the main ingredients in my favorite sore muscle salve. You could also use it in a number of skin care products. I’ve also seen another RUclips channel I watch on historical shoemaking use beeswax to help her make shoes.
Hope you find out what happened to your bees 😢 also these videos are incredible, they’re educational and relaxing and definitely aspirational. Appreciate you guys!
Thanks, glad you’re enjoying them!
Another fantastic video, thank you for the high quality content, expertly produced.
I have never heard anyone offer sliding scale for someone on assistance. How wonderful, to offer that as your course could really impact those in a life saving and changing way. From survival to thriving. Thank you so much for being thoughtful and may it bring abundance to you for.your kindness
After extracting the honey I put everything I used (utensils and beeswax) outside so the bees get to clean every bit of honey and it's not wasted. It takes a few hours but to me every drop of honey is worth saving 😊
If you scrunch up the wax fabric a few times before using it sticks to itself much better.
Such an awesome and educational video. I have been hankering to do some beekeeping, but I have to get over the price of a swarm trap and hive. I love how you showed straining your beeswax without using a honey extruder. It’s great to know that you can also use the honey water from the process so nothing is wasted. I have heard that when Mary Kay Ash started her cosmetic company, her first product was inspired by a hide tanner who had lovely skin from the product he used to soften his hides. Thank you for sharing your journey with us every week.
I'd love to see how you made the wicks--that's right up my alley! I make wraps and candles too, and I also use beeswax for lip balm, salve, soap. Thanks for another great video!
Omg I love your TikTok’s and shorts on YT and why did I not think of you guys having actual long videos??? Loveee
That honey / wax mix looks like gooey sunshine
I admire how clean everything is, how there is stainless steal pot. Nothing like this at honey bee farms.
A jelly bag and stand might make the straining easier
Another amazing relaxing and inspiring video of yours. Thanks so much for uploading these wonderful video’s. ❤
This is the coolest thing I have seen in a while.
One of my favorite natural snacks is to stick a hunk of honeycomb in the freezer! I'll use a spoon get a frozen chunk and chew it. The honey turns into an almost taffy consistency and it's fun chewing on the wax!
every tool for the garden needs up keep and bees wax is great not just for the wood handles but the metal so you dont have rust as fast in colder/wet places( for the car people its great to give a shine to tiers after cleaning /as well as the dash ) wax is great for cheese making too you can coat it and the wax will keep the cheese fresher for longer....... man bees on a small homestead is so useful......and yummmmy
Would highly recommend crockpots as they are the best for melting wax. Low constant temp and can be done anywhere you have a flat surface near an outlet!
Thank you for the tip about using empty frames to increase the amount of wax per hive as I am far more into beeswax then honey!
Watching the honey drip was sooo satisfying! The whole process was very satisfying. Y’all should do a video without any music and just the ASMR!
Ive just had my first experience with bees, im renovating a home, that had to have hives removed from its floors, i got a few jars of honey from it. Really amazing experience, now im very curious in the whole process, cant wait to get my own hives someday and make it a hobbie, cool video so many uses!
Beautiful music!
SWEET! Just found your channel today which is BEE-utiful news, as we are starting our beekeeping adventure this year! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and your friend's lovely music.
4:16 i didnt realise i was drooling untill i had to wipe it off my lips 😅
😂
I'm very sorry about your bees. :( Have you guys ever thought about reaching out or watching Fredrick Dunn? He is a well known bee keeper in PA.
Btw thank u. This was a very therapeutic video.
Watching this has gotten me craving baklava, which was always a favourite of mine growing up
Same! The Syrian version that I grew up with (baklawa) had rose water syrup instead of honey, but we might have to start making the Greek version now that we have so much honey 🙂
Nice. You'll probably catch a swarm in the empty equipment. Free bees!
This video was pretty awesome! 🔥
Fascinating process! Your honey looks like liquid gold! Make lip balm with the wax!
Listen this channel deserves a million sub too good
LOVE this video!! so inspiring. thank you guys!
Useful to me from India
thật tuyệt vời khi biết công dụng của sáp ong mà bạn làm nên những vật dụng rất hửu ích
I highly recommend insulating your hives in the future. More research is coming out that hives in trees are well insulated and clustering is a survival technique, not a natural state for bees in the winter. That cluster looked small. How were your mite checks? What treatments were done? In the future I'd also recommend getting VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) bees. I can email you some rec's for people locally.
Love your video. I would love to take your courses.
I feel you. Lost 4 of my 5 hives this winter.
Use chalk to draw(on the counter top) a border around your honey container to keep ants away.
OR
Sprinkle cinnamon around the same area.
Gorgeous!
I rinse the crushed wax with water to get the leftover honey off, put the wax in a pot ontop of a vegetable steamer lined with cloth. Then I stick it in the oven at 170° so it can melt through the strainer and into the pot!
@homegrownhandgathered, given the subject matter, I’d say a better title for the soundtrack @5:27 would be “Caramel Windchimes”, LOL!
Have you ever considered using a weight to weigh down the crushed honeycomb while it's going through the first strainer? I think it might help extract more honey to do so, and you'd have a little cleaner wax leftover to render!
The issue with Langstroth frames in horizontal hives, they are short vertically to force the bees to put the honey that they normally would keep around their brood into the next frame above. They are made to squeeze every last drop of honey from the bees, which is far from ideal for the bees.
Nice Video, as always :)
As to your lost hives:
Im an Beekeeper, and have some points:
If you have not found any signs of an american foulbrood infection, then the most likely cause of the collapse is the varroa mite, did you treat the hives against those? Oxalic acid and formic acid are the most reliable options to do so. Typical signs of an hive that died to the mite would be an nearly bee free box in the end.
Another reason may be that the bees could not reach the honey, that would be the most likely case if you found a lot of dead bees (the majority of the hive) in the bottom of the box (this can happen even if there is plenty of honey in the box)
As a side note, are you swapping out old, dark combs in the brood nest? That helps to keep the hives heathier, but tends to be more difficult in boxes in your hive style
Hope that helps and you could understand what im trying to say, english isnt my first language :D
Thanks for the info! There was no sign of foulbrood or varroa and the dead bee ball was on a comb that had plenty of honey so we’re stumped. We think maybe it was a moisture thing because we built the bee box ourselves and I worry that we didn’t design it to have the right amount of airflow that they need in the Winter
Amazing incredible really
I would put a metal base on the bottom of the wick because once it burns down to the bottom, the wick will fall over prematurely without the metal, decreasing the life of the candle. It will burn longer with a wick base.
Loved that the ants made an appearance. 🐜🐜
That honey is an amazing color! Is that from age or from the nectar sources in your area?
Without processing, it’s the source of nectar that determines the shade of honey
A ritual, offering, or alter for sure ❤
Try a salad spinner? For separating wax and honey
How sad about the hives, but I would have been more concerned if there was fresh honeycomb and Jordan wasn’t snacking on it. That’s tantamount to a crisis! 😂 My own sweetie has a big sweet tooth as well, so we both enjoyed this newest video. 👍🏻
Traduire en Francais.Mercie 🐝🐝🐝
What do you do with the residue you get after separating the wax? Can it be used as fertilisers?
i weigh the residual wax/honey mix then wash the honey out with as little of measure warm water as possible then weigh the washed wax so I know how much honey is in the water. Then I weigh the wax and know how much honey is dissolved.
when doing a full batch i add the remainder towards 7kg of honey and too it with water to 25l in a carbuoy.then I use mead yeast and let it ferment under airlock for min 2month, decant and keep fermenting/keeping it. the yeast will die off around 18% alcohol.
then i bottle it and if you you can keep it for a long time and it gets better by the year.
of course you can make any fraction of the above as long as you keep the ratios.
How do you clean the wooden pieces that came out of the hive? There was so much sticky stuff on them.
You should consider doing a film for Justin Rhodes film contest he is doing.
Hello, I seen in another video that you did the crush and strain method for extracting your honey. I did this as well, but now I'm finding it hard to clean my foundations. How did you guys clean your foundations before putting them back into the frames and then coating them with wax before giving them back to the bees? I have searched all over the internet and asked my bee group and no one can tell me. I do not want to use bleach, can you please share what you guys did? Thanks so much
Have you thought about making mead?
Yea we might get a batch going next month actually!
Is it possible they froze?
Lovely video. Sorry if you've already been told but you shouldn't leave the queen excluder on over winter as the bees won't leave the queen so will starve if the food stores are beyond the excluder.
Thanks. We don’t leave the Queen excluder on over winter. One of our hives is horizontal so it doesn’t even have a Queen excluder
Okay sorry when I saw the excluder I thought it must have been left on. Thanks so much for the video.
Do you do any mite treatments on your hives?
Do you do anything with the cheese cloth gunk or does it just go in the compost?
We use that for fire starters when we’re camping 🙂
I have been told ants do not like cinnamon. Can do cinnamon around your moat for double protection.
Did you do something different with your hair? It looks amazing. Im not sure if its the color or the way it frames your face, or both but you look beautiful
Aw thanks! Honestly it’s really dirty haha so I think I just got lucky with how it looks today :)
Did you guys buy your bees or are they local/feral bees that you’ve caught?
They're local swarms and splits
Oh interesting, I just got into bee keeping and heard local ones tend to be more hardy. If you guys find out what happened I’d be interested in hearing an update! Also thanks for sharing the honey and beeswax process, it’s helpful for a newbie like me :)
I have a theory as to what may have happened to your bees. It looks like the hives that died out were both horizontal hives that have the frames going perpendicular to the direction the winter cluster would be travelling. These sorts of hives, while very practical for the beekeeper, tend to not perform very well in cold temperatures. Due to the way the comb is arranged, it can happen that, during a particularly cold bit of time, the cluster doesnt manage to get to the other side of a frame, where there is still honey, meaning they starve centimeters away from stores.
Obviously, I am basing this off of very little information, so I could be entirely wrong, it is just my best guess given what I could see.
Very dark honey o wonder what the primary nector source was
If you crinkle the wraps they will stick to themselves better and form better to what they're covering!
Have you tried adding a few drops of an essential oil to your candles?
Beeswax smells so beautiful on its own! Essential oils would just pollute it.
❤❤❤❤
I would search "bee poop". When the weather is too cold, bees cannot eliminate by doing a "cleansing flight". Often bees will hold onto the poop and get sick. The more pure the honey (sugar wise), the less they need to eliminate. I've heard of beekeepers supplementing their bees corn syrup during winter months to help with this problem.
I go hard for Caramel Windchimes
Are you guys selling your honey?🤩
I feel like that’s akin to asking someone if they sell their groceries.
No, but we share a lot with friends and family and occasionally trade for things we don't grow
Maybe it's the mites.
There was no sign of mites. We let them build natural comb which means their cells are slightly smaller than wax foundation and that makes it harder for mites to fit in there with the larvae
If you soak the whole wick in wax first it will burn much longer!
Por favor coloque legenda em português
This is so interesting. I'd love to play around with beeswax but have no inclination to actually keep bees. I'll have to see if it can be bought and if so, if it's really beeswax.