Project Beeswax

Dale Farm has its own hives and as well as producing our delicious honey, our bees produce beeswax.

Beeswax is a naturally occurring wax produced in the bee’s hives by honeybees. Glands under the abdomen of the bees secrete this wax and it is used to build the honey comb. There are eight glands in the bee abdominal segment of female worker bees that produce the wax. The wax is recovered as a by-product when honey is harvested and refined.

Cleaning Wax

The beeswax collected from the hives is often rather dirty and so needs cleaning up before it can be used.

We need to get from the dirty wax, below left, to the nice clean wax on the right. Bees with their dirty little feet bring in all sorts of contaminants into the hive, which need to be removed before the wax can be used. This process involves several heating and cooling steps between 60°C – 75°C to dissolve and filter off impurities. After wax cools and separates from the added water the remaining crude impurities can be scraped off the bottom of the wax.

We will be experimenting with finding the safest way to clean our wax over the next few weeks.

There are many kinds of different products that you can make from beeswax, from soaps, to furniture polish. We intend to investigate these options over the next few months, but first we need to consider the best and safest ways to get the wax clean.

Bob, one of our trustees kindly arranged for us to do some training with one of his friends (Kate – below right). Kate is very knowledgeable about all aspects of bee care and management. Kate made us aware of some additional ways we can keep our bees happy as well as providing us with some really interesting reference reading on bee keeping.

Candle Making

One the products we want to start making, amongst other things are candles. Kate was kind enough to let us make our first candle out of some of her clean beeswax. Terri and Colleen our staff members were so excited to make their first candle. We heated clean beeswax and poured into a clean silicone mould. Kate showed us how she heated beeswax and set the wick into place; shortly afterwards the candle was ready.

Safety First

With the varying abilities of the people we support we always have to take into account people’s additional needs and any additional risks these might pose. Keeping everyone as safe as possible is our highest priority and one we consider carefully in everything we do.

Bee Training

Many of the people we support, staff and volunteers have received training on bee care and management, over the next few weeks we intend to widen this training.

We want the very best for our bees and over the next few weeks and months we intend to investigate and more fully document, bee management and care season by season.

Update

After a lot of soul searching, it was decided that processing hot wax was not a safe option for the people we support and the project was abandoned.