Robin Hill Gardens

I often end up with “bad wax”: the dark brood nest wax, full of pupa skins and bee parts. What to do with it? It’s useless for candles and cosmetics. In these small quantities, it’s too little gain for the hassle to melt it down and filter it. And I can’t throw it on my compost because it will met and smother it.

At the Farmers Market on Wednesday a woman and her daughter approached me to ask about the wax. They are glass blowers and were wondering if we had any wax they could have. They use bees wax to lubricate their tools. I immediately thought of the bad wax. We speculated that the impurities and what honey is still in it should just burn off.  I put some together for them today and they came to pick it up and will try it out this evening in their studio in Cambridge.

I love the idea that this “bad wax” will get yet another, last use!

{UPDATE} 7/28: Ribin let me know it works well after melting and one simple straining. So we’ll be gathering it as a group for the glassblowers!

Another day at the Market.

This time Amie helped for about an hour, mainly explaining to customers about the layer of wax that will form like a seal on top of their honey in the next couple of days. You see, this honey was extracted only the day before (I was up till midnight cleaning the equipment, porch and kitchen) and so it still had air as well as cappings wax saturating the honey. We spun forty jars (8 fl.oz.) of honey from eight medium frames, four mine, four from another beekeeper, who joined in the homemade extractor fun.

The market was slow because the 4th of July: less vendors, less customers, yet it didn’t hurt our stall. We sold all but 8 jars of honey and so we’ve collected enough money to buy the extractor for the group as well as some of the movie, More than Honey (with Public Performance Rights) that we want to show all over the region this Summer.

A thunderstorm blew by, with pelting rain, thunder and lightening, and even some hail, but the swarm is still up there. They moved position to another, nearby branch, and are spread out along it. Poor bees. Maybe they’re thinking it wasn’t a good idea anyway. Maybe there can go back home? But then of course there might be a new queen in there by now… These are some pictures from earlier, when it was sunny skies throughout.

Hive 3, my best hive, the one that gave me 70 lbs of honey last year and had already filled one and a half honey supers with Spring honey this year, swarmed! Around 11:30 am, my mom (parents are visiting) and I came around the corner into the veg garden and instantly noticed the noise. There was a large though diffuse cloud of bees in front of the hive, vanishing. I think that was the end of the swarm, though, so I mistook it for a pre-swarm, or perhaps a whole bunch of new bees taking a practice flight. But even when the hubbub had died down, I could hear that insistent buzz. For a moment I thought, it must either be psychological (the way you still hear the buzzing the night you had your first bad hive experience), or it’s a swarm and it’s close. I looked in the bushes and trees, nothing. Then I looked up.

There, in the oak about 40 feet (?) right above the bee yard, the ball was forming. Too high up for me!  The swarm soon flattened itself against the branches and that’s where it’s still at this moment (7:10 pm). Apparently, that it was a cloudy day with sprinkles didn’t stop them.

That was the best queen I had ever had, and I had been toying with the idea of using her as a breeder queen. Too late! I did put swarm trap up for them, hoping the scouts that will be coming off that swarm looking for a new home will find it, but who knows! If not, I’ll have lost the best part of that colony. My other strong hive (hive 1) also swarmed last year and after that it never recovered, didn’t give me any honey, and it perished over the winter. Well, though I am apprehensive because feral bees don’t do well around here, I do wish them luck!