We are about a month away from the first spring nectar flow in Western PA, and the bees have been flying regularly for about a month; on sunny dry days they are out visiting our pond, the gardens and the woods, collecting pollen to feed the baby bees being raised right now in the snug safety of the hive. We've been lucky this winter again: all our hives survived. So far, reports for our area are the usual 40-60% winter hive loss, and we feel very fortunate that luck has smiled upon our bees one more winter. We have some theories about winter hive loss, but those theories are not helpful to our fellow beekeepers dealing with the loss of their hives. It's not easy being a beekeeper, and you can do all the right things and still end up with dead bees in March. A mentor of ours reported 60% loss of his hives in one of his beeyards, and given his experience, we all realize that having bees survive the winter is not just about skill, but also about luck. We are grateful for our luck!
We've been processing wax all winter and attempted to make our own candles this year. In a previous blog post, we discussed the difference between 100% beeswax candles and pure beeswax candles, with the former being as it says, ONLY beeswax, and the later being 51% beeswax as a minimum content. Candlemaking is an art: it's not simply a matter of melting wax and pouring it into molds! Everything that can go wrong will go wrong with your candle. Wick size matters: pick a too small diameter wick and you will get melted tunnels around the wick, with the rest of the candle not melting evenly. Pick too big of a wick and it burns too hot, too fast, and is a fire hazard. Wicks should also be 100% cotton, and soaked in a borax-salt solution prior to use, to ensure the wicks burn slowly, and to avoid tunnels around the wicks as the cotton absorbs the melted wax. All molds should be sprayed with a silicone release spray, although regular vegetable oil can also be used. Failure to spray results in cracked candles as the beeswax shrinks as it cools. The photo accompanying this blogpost is the actual wax pattern in our melting pot when we opened it up! The "smile" is the inevitable crack that occurs as a consequence of the wax clinging to the sides of the pot. This ugly crack or opening will happen to every candle 100% of the time if you make candles in non-silicone molds and without using a release spray, especially when pouring larger candles such as pillars and shapes with more volume. Patience is important too: beeswax candles hold their heat a long time, so a candle poured in the evening will not be ready to unmold until the next day. If you're impatient and you pull on a wick too early - you'll yank out the wick but not the candle! Equally annoying is that if your candle is cooled too quickly, it will crack for sure, a problem every impatient candlemaker has discovered. No candles in the fridge or outside on the cold deck to cool down!
We have many candles in our house, and when we put our first beeswax candle to the test against soy, paraffin and other candles, we realized first hand what a beautiful product a beeswax candle really is, and why it is worth the extra money and the extra effort to find them. These candles burn so cleanly, compared to our paraffin candle where we could actually see the soot rising from the candle, as well as the black soot around the top of the candle. The beeswax candle burned very slowly too, perhaps half the speed of the other candles, so it lasts a long time. Best of all, the smell of a beeswax candle is heavenly! Our house smelled like warm honey and sunshine, a clean, outdoorsy smell of sunny summer days, sort of like fresh laundry smells when sheets are dried on the clothesline.
So when you're at a farmer's market and you see 100% pure beeswax candles, they are most definitely worth the price! Beeswax is the Cadillac of all waxes, a beautiful product, and a miracle creation. Watching our homemade candles flicker in our living room makes us even more humbled by the bees who make this wondrous wax. It takes 8 pounds of honey for bees to make 1 pound of wax, so you can understand why wax is so valuable to a beekeeper - and to a bee hive.
Disclaimers: Blog posts are opinions, not advice. One thing all beekeepers will agree on, is that if you ask 10 beekeepers what to do, you'll get 13 different answers. Beekeeping is alchemy, nature, and a bit of magic.
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