Beekeepers, also known as apiarists, harvest the honey. Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by bees from the nectar of flowers. Bees visit these flowers in order to collect the nectar but in the process, also pollinate plants. The definition of honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition for any other substance.
This includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners. Honey is significantly sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for baking.
Honey has a distinctive flavour which lead some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners. Liquid honey does not spoil. Because of its high sugar concentration it kills bacteria by plasmolysis. Natural airborne yeasts cannot become active in it because the moisture content is too low. The main uses of honey are in cooking, baking, spreading on bread or toast, and as an addition to various beverages such as tea. Because honey is hygroscopic drawing moisture from the air , a small quantity of honey added to a pastry recipe will retard staling.
Raw honey also contains enzymes that help in its digestion, several vitamins, and antioxidants. Beeswax is secreted by honey bees of a certain age in the form of thin scales.
The scales are produced by glands of 12 to 17 days old worker bees on the ventral stomach surface of the abdomen. Worker bees have eight wax-producing glands on the inner sides of the sternites the ventral shield or plate of each segment of the body. Wax is produced from abdominal segments.
The size of these wax glands depends on the age of the worker. Honey bees use the beeswax to build honey comb cells in which the young are raised and honey and pollen are stored. Approximately eight pounds of honey is consumed by bees to produce one pound of beeswax 0.
When beekeepers go to extract the honey, they cut off the wax caps from each honeycomb cell. Their colour varies from yellowish-white to brownish depending on the purity and the type of flowers gathered by the bees. Wax from the brood comb of the honey bee hive tends to be darker than wax from the honey comb.
Due to the impurities, the wax has to be rendered before further use. It is high in protein and is rich in vitamins B, C, and D. Tim Trescott and two of the hydraulic wax presses he built using old train pistons. While his beeswax operation typically renders about 50, pounds of beeswax in a year, Tim says he is a small operation and that there are somewhere between one-to-two dozen operations scattered around the U.
As Tim puts it, he would like to grow enough to have some influence in the industry. One idea he had when he started up in North Carolina, was to contact all the local beekeeping associations in North Carolina, along with neighboring Tennesee, Virginia and Georgia and encourage them to start collecting wax and slum from their members.
He would be willing to do all the hauling, collecting all the wax and slum that they could come up with and then pay the associations around. The money could go to help the associations.
With approximately 30, backyard beekeepers in North Carolina today, Tim estimates that none of the slum gum the beekeepers produce currently receives further rendering and as a result, hundreds of tons of beeswax is being thrown away simply because no-one is willing to put it aside, store it and keep the moths out of it. Beelite Wax Recovery and Beelight Candles is a family business.
This freed Tim up to focus primarily on the rendering side of things, although he still handles the Beelite Candle invoicing and associated administrative duties. Emily produces, packs, and ships everything from votives and tea-lights to holiday and nature themed candles, as well as hand-dipped tapers. She also ships out blocks of bulk wax and makes a line of soy wax candles which allows the family to offer a line of colored and scented candles since the soy wax handles coloring and scenting better than beeswax does.
Tim is finding that the two businesses, Beelite Beeswax Recovery and Beelite Candles complement each other nicely and he is now selling all the beeswax he can render about as fast as he can produce it. Sometimes the wax that Tim is able to remove from slum is very dark. By running it back through the filtering system we take a lot of that dark matter out and start to lighten it back up. Remove the dish and let it cool. The wax will harden at the top of the dish and the honey will settle at the bottom.
Step 5. At this point the wax will be melted in some points and granulated in others, similar to wet sand. To clean the wax of the sticky honey, scrape the wax off the top of the honey and place it in a pot designated to honey collection.
Add an equal approximately amount of water to the pot and set in a double boiler system. As the water heats, the wax will melt. Once the wax is melted, remove from heat and let it cool.
If the wax contains particles of debris, it can be melted again in a double boiler system and drained through several layers of cheese cloth or an old cotton rag. Notes: For the final pouring, be sure to use a container that has straight sides so the wax can slip out once hardened. If the wax is being stubborn, place in the freezer for a few minutes.
The cold will force the wax to shrink away from the sides. A half gallon milk carton works great for forming your wax blocks. Once the wax cools, the cardboard can be peeled away, releasing the brick. This is the wax from two frames of honey. Cancel Comment. Extractors are cheap, and even easy to make, you save so much wax by using a mechanical extractor, as you mentioned in your article.
In the South where we live it is estimated at 15 lbs of honey per pound of wax. We get enough wax from the cappings of the honeycomb to make lip balm, and use for lubrication and preserving handles on our mini farm. I just extracted 33 lbs of honey and wanted to keep the wax for projects. Your information was detailed and easy to follow. Free Newsletter Contribute Advertise.
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