(swear when I get enough hives that's gonna be the name of the wax product if I sell.....)

 

So, how far do you take making your beeswax finish by hand? To bee fair (pauses for the groans), they did all the hard work.  Pic is of the wax cappings draining off the honey (they cap the honeycomb with wax, gotta cut it off to get the honey). Lessons learned? Get ALL of the honey out before putting the wax in the double boiler. It seperates out, but still..

 

Also got a couple of gallons of honey. Pretty warm here, so may go into the hive for a little bit more once more in September, maybe not, and make a much larger hive next year (deeper brood boxes and honey supers).

 

Now the alchemy bit....how to turn it into gold. Take a typical beeswax/turp/linseed finish, and apply heat with a torch. (I've had better results with this if I go light on the turpentine.) Makes a nice even gold, and a fairly tough finish. Takes some experimentation to get without streaking. Don't have a great pic handy, but it's applied to this ballpein hawk.

 

Hmmm, maybe next year I could tap those pine trees out back to make turpentine?

 

   

Also, blue jeans are NOT thick enough protection when robbing the hive.... :P

I wish I had something constructive to add, but I don't. Just wanted to say that the 2nd comment got a good laugh out of me picturing the scenario. Hope you are okay  :P . I will be watching to see what advise is given about this.

Can't you use a centrifuge to separate the honey from the comb?

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Can and did. See if I can post a pic of that homemade wonder in a bit. But first, you have to take off the wax caps on the end of the comb with a hot knife (or an electric hot knife). And you tend to get about 10-20 percent of the honey in the caps, so, gotta drain it after in a strainer.

Here's a vid of my contraption, good for a laugh. The crazy dangerous crank came off for the next couple of frames. May reinstall it in shorttened form.

 

Edited August 19, 201411 yr by Nobody Special

You've gotta wonder how hungry the first guy was that discovered you could eat honey!  "Hey, look at that huge swarm of stinging insects!  Lets go in there and steel their food."

 

I keep saying I'm going to start a hive or two.  

I like your idea for the home made centrifuge. I might have to borrow that idea.

Make sure you put wire on the outside to keep the wax from coming apart.

 

Threadall works nice, but I had to modify my original bearing block (a chunk of two by four, caulked and screwed to the bottom, with a hole in the middle) by sleeving it with a washer and bit of pipe to keep it from threading its way in.

You've gotta wonder how hungry the first guy was that discovered you could eat honey!  "Hey, look at that huge swarm of stinging insects!  Lets go in there and steel their food."

 

I keep saying I'm going to start a hive or two.  

 

I've seen video of chimps and other primates robbing hives so I'm thinking they were just collecting the high quality food.

 

On a similar note, I've always wondered what the first human to try riding a horse was thinking. Maybe a teenager slitting the throat of one downed in a hunt making one of the #1 mistakes a hunter can make, stepping over the game's next from behind and surprise surprise the game still has some fight in it. WooHOO, yipppy kai aieeee!

 

Frosty The Lucky.

(Actually, horses pulled stuff for centuries before anybody tried to ride. Only after breeding increased size significantly could riding be considered. Chariots came long before Cavalry.)