Rendering Bees Wax and Burr Comb

foreign folks how you guys doing what am I doing get ready to render some bark on what else would I be doing on a beautiful beautiful 54 degree day here in Southeast Louisiana [Music] it's December 18th beautiful beautiful day here in Southeast Louisiana and killing some time and want to render some comb so I'm going to show you what I got here I want you to take a look at this I always always talk about the beginning of the season and all my videos since the first year I started doing YouTube was save your Burke Home Folks it's invaluable is that a right word no it's valuable it's valuable very valuable at least I found it to be even if it's only a couple of hives you're scraping Burke home from save it over a couple years then but save your Virgo and I'll show you why now if I've said it once I have said it a thousand times and you know what I'm gonna say it's not a how-to video I'm not showing you how to render wax I'm just showing you one way that I render wax and I got it from folks that showed how to render wax so since I learned it as a how-to render wax from other people I want to let you guys know this is how I do rendering wax why because there's enough how-to videos out there and mine's not one of them I'm just average guy doing a Blog in my VR and we are in the winter months here we have got beautiful weather on the horizon and then we've got some really cold weather thank you Canada for sending us this cold weather thank you Canada it's going to get into teens and everything down here is going to bust freeze break everything else thank you Canada thank you Canada thank you Canada so yes supposed to be in the teens high of like 32 for a couple days but then we're going to warm back up into the 40s and 50s so it's going to be wonderful we're going to actually get some real winter here one bit of news for you I finished up oxalic acid vaporization yesterday uh it was a week after that first dose or actually five days and four four days and five days or five days and six days something like that anyway it's done and I did find a debt out I don't know how I didn't notice it the first time around or maybe it died between that first dose and that second dose but it's a debt out I looked at it and after you're done vaporizing all the bees pour out even on these I just did it and it was 50 degrees all the bees poured out that one didn't so opened it up just cracked the top sure enough small happy to larvae so what I did was I stuffed every hole with plastic bags to kind of contain the disgusting mess that's getting ready to happen and last night we had a good freeze and some good frost on the ground we got into the upper 20s so hopefully we at least froze some of them down plus I admit I took a torch opened the top and got rid of a bunch of them hopefully that's taking care of some of the eggs if not next week's weather should freeze them out hopefully it doesn't get slimed out too bad and pull on the bottom doesn't matter any frames that are disgustingly ruined will get thrown away and I'll save the wooden frame and the plastic Foundation everything else gets scraped off once it's washed with a hose so I did find the dead out kind of disappointing it was Hive number 18. I was expecting High number 19 not 18 but obviously 18 had dwindled more than I thought over the past um a couple months so 19 on the other hand open it up and while it looked weak it was alive so we'll see what happens with that anyway I'm going to show you a little bit about what I do for rendering Burke home why do I always tell you to save Burke home mind you now I'm running anywhere from 35 to 50 hives at any given time that's including nukes I'm gonna sell splits moves swarms here and there moving transient bees through the yard whatever so we'll just say an average of 40. it's a good number and not all production hives some of those are singles and nukes that are standing by to go through the season until the next season those are five frames I may split off of a Collie just to keep it from swarming knowing they're not going to produce that year but I'm going to raise them for the next year things like that so if you say an average of 40 colonies and I'm scraping Burke home and of course at the beginning of the year it's very very heavy then it slows back a little bit and then as the flows hit it gets heavy again those are the two main times it's early spring and going into summer is when I really scrape a lot of it but anytime I scrape any of it unless there's like one piece I may scrape and Chunk in the woods most all the time I save every bit I bring a bucket out with me and let me show you why I do that so this is last year's Burke home and I never refined it on the second go around I never made a second rendering actually yeah this might have been yeah that's right this is last year's all the last years because I remember I made two big cakes and this was left over from some small batches I did I don't do these in my nice new clean baller okay I do these in the pot that I'm gonna show you but this and this is last year's renderings after I scrape them I only scrape so much because pretty soon I start getting down into propolis mixed with wax and you can see there's wax granules as you start scraping hey that's wax wasted again if I'm not throwing burkham away I'm not throwing anything away if I can help it so I never did do a final on these I just didn't get around to it I don't know why I didn't but I just didn't uh so that's that's last year's Burke Home Folks that's Burke home from last year that's why I say save it this year and look there might have been a couple other old frames and uh pieces of solid comb that I saved and went into there too so I'm gonna say let's say about two-thirds of that is Burke home but still that's a lot that's a lot of yellow wax that I can use to re-wax frames and then this year's strictly Burke home 100 Burke home is this right here I just got done I did that yesterday so what I'm going to do I did this yesterday I scraped it down this morning that's a lot of propolis and some debris mixed in with wax I had about that much it's about an inch of brown slushy sloppy debris on this I scraped off but I don't scrape it like again too deep because that's wax I'm scraping off so I save it and do a final rendering on it it didn't come out super clean but that's because it was a nasty bucket but I'm gonna go ahead and render all this down and I'll show you how I do it and this is basically how I did the rendering yesterday so what I did yesterday was I I did all the sludgy nasty part and I didn't video it um I've got a video from last year doing it and from the year prior doing it and so I'll try and remember to link it right up here in this corner um and what that'll do is it'll show you what I do with that initial first rendering it's pretty nasty it's sloppy sludgy when I say sludgy it's all the any of the wax moth stuff that was around all the cocoons all that stuff and it's just a long process I do it in this pot right here because that's my nasty pot I don't I've already got my nice clean new waxer cleaned up from all the capping wax and I'm really going to try and keep the cappings wax in there if I can and I'll use this one continue use this one for Burke home because any of you that have done this Old Brook home know in this old uh old black comb and everything it's the frames you may scrape it's just nasty so I keep it in that to me it's just easier to keep it separate so that's what we're going to do and I'll show you how I do it and how I do it it's no different than most anybody else will see on the internet now we boil before we get too far in this video I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas this should be coming out after Christmas but before high life so I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and I'm wishing everybody a Happy New Year now we have water boiling let's go take a look [Applause] [Applause] stuff came out of the freezer so it's going to cool it down quick [Applause] [Applause] in the freezer what do you mean in the freezer Mike I'll tell you what I mean what I mean is group home wasn't refined the second time still got a lot of Honey mixed in it until about a lot of a lot of smell we're residue it's got a lot of pollen left in it so I have left out the block like that before and have come back a few months later in the Summers we have down here I freeze it all until I'm ready to do that last rendering on it and once it gets anything close matter of fact it's already close to a boil I'm going to turn it down because I don't want to burn my wax four inches of water in there so that helps but I don't want to take it to burning this wax especially on this final rendering now it's apart watch very carefully that we don't overrun the pot I let it boil it's still on a pretty high uh setting but what I want to do is get the majority of it melted and just keep lowering the temperature a little at a time because what I've learned is wax it's extremely flammable I can show you a spot see the round circle that's wax that was on fire inside of my barn because I was trying to keep the bees off of it that was a good lesson to learn without burning the place down so I started to see water coming up through the wax boiling and it's got this low heat but it's not all melted yet otherwise it usually be coming in the center and I want to see a steady boil of water coming up not just these Pockets going and then going away then coming back and then going away that's pretty steady but look stirring it there's why still got more wax to melt so they get all that melted down that's that big last block I put in there so a little more to go and then it'll be time to turn off and just let it settle for a few minutes while I go get a paint strainer and such for my buckets now these another thing you see is all this foam and all that's that moisture and that honey coming up out of there as well I mean the wax some of the wax is obviously foaming too but a lot of times if there's a lot of Honey left in it I found that whenever I'm doing it I see a lot of like if I'm doing an old cutout and I'm getting rid of a lot of old honeycomb that foam will just sit there and boil off and boil off and it's usually honey when it's just more pure wax you just see a light light coat of foam on top oh you let it get on though it'll foam over quick and boy that stuff lights up fast now what I do I got this thing to where it started rolling the water up and I turned it way way down I actually want to start reducing that I don't want to keep it at a boil too long I just want to keep it warm that's just about like that because I don't want to super heat this stuff and I've got one more piece that was down in here it might be gone now yeah I still feel it down and there's one little piece left it's gonna let it do its thing there it is I feel it down there yeah there it went floated by well you can't see it's too small to pick up but basically I just want to keep it warm now it's hot enough to finish melting that um but I don't want to keep it boiling I really try to bring it down and just keep it warm enough to finish melting slowly and that's where I'm at now and this also allows everything to kind of settle um and then I just pour it up do we really pour things up though it's more like a pour down all right there's no wax down there so we're done too much for the it's gonna be a huge block usually do one year at a time this is two seasons now another thing what that I'll say about this process is I have not had an issue with this wax as far as going on two frames and the bees not touching it they do just fine I don't get it super clean I'm gonna run through a paint strainer I normally use cheesecloth I'm gonna run through a paint strainer and a strainer and again I don't normally have problems with this at all so it can be a little dirty I've never had an issue with the bees not drawing it out they do just fine with it and that's really all I use is so dark wax for it's just high maintenance so it's it's such a valuable valuable commodity you scrape that Burke home even if you only have a couple hives scrape it each and I know that's not much but scrape and save it for a couple years you just never know any frames you're going to scrape and reclean save every bit of it that's my advice I mean do what you need to do but that's what I need to do because let me tell you I've even tried to get some wax from Mr Ed one time seems like a nice guy right until you try to get wax from them you ain't giving it up most begivers don't just give it up and some will actually sell it for a reasonable price but most like me I don't I sell candles for my my capping's wax but that's it I don't sell blocks of it normally anything over a pound well actually such a hot commodity especially this old brewed wax that I can reuse cutouts only reason I even do an annual cutout is to get the wax that's my whole purpose so I use this big old strainer got this at a restaurant supply store seems like the right size I'll throw this down here just to kind of grab some extra stuff we'll pull that right out I like that strainer because it fits in the bucket really well there's all the dirt and gunk starting to clog it's the nastiness explain what I did when I took it I take this right here board on it let it dry let it cure and that's it folks that's all I'm gonna do we'll go from there and see what we come up with in the next few days I I got so much stuff I've got to get done tomorrow I may not do it tomorrow but in the next couple days we'll come out here we'll break it out scrape the bottom and see what we come up with well good morning folks it is now December 23rd and I'm going to take care of this wax finally if it's not frozen so we made it to the 20s this only happens every couple years but this year it's going to be for the next few days we're going to be in the teens tomorrow 20s what is that in Celsius I just looked that up so in Celsius it's minus six so now I know what y'all are talking about Brad and Ian whenever uh he talked about minus six Celsius it's not unheard of down here Snow's not unheard of we had eight inches one year had six inches another year it's not unheard of but the wind is howling it's actually up to 24 right now it was 21. I think the low tomorrow is going to be 19. so anyway gonna be cold um down here we really have to wrap our pipes and things like that watch what we have exposed because we're not even close to being built for this but I've got a routine for when it gets cold when it gets in the 20s so no problem the only issue I'm thinking now is is the water under the wax Frozen can I show you what I've got for burcon now in my uh two seasons of saving Burke home usually I melted each season last year for whatever reason I didn't get to it uh so anyway gonna take a look at that really quick and that way we can show you what we got for burkoma why I think it's so important to save your Virgo man it is cold wow that wind is howling I don't know what the wind chill is I said it was going to be a somewhere like between zero and five but um let me get out of the wind hopefully that didn't freeze too bad and we'll see what we got and I'll show you why I really do believe it's important to save your Burke home man it's important okay so it's still quite warm in my barn that's good um it's cold but it's warm warm enough I don't think it froze I see water coming up the wax looks beautiful take a look at what I'm seeing there it is so we got some water that's good it means we should be able to get it out no problem but I don't know what kind of debris I have underneath this shouldn't be a ton because it is the final rendering and I'm gonna get a scraper and bring it with me we're going to take it in the back and do this because I've noticed this old water when you pour it out here it stinks for days and it kills a spot of grass [Music] beautiful that thing fell right out it wasn't even stuck on the sides so that was nice but uh got a little debris layer on it pretty well that's okay this is used for maintenance on frames and such and this right here is eight inches solid of a cake of Wax from two seasons of Burke home now don't get me wrong I did scrape a few frames and there were maybe a couple foundationless frames from old swarm traps that were in there that I think there was two or three of those I added in of you know wax I took out of the frame dark old comb so there was a few of those but I'm telling you 85 to 90 percent of this is Burke home that's why I say burkham there's my hand it's definitely a nice piece of wax let me just take this old debris and go right down to the propolis I won't redo this it'll just have this on the bottom I'll scrape it a little better with a nice metal scraper there you go I found for me it's easier to scrape this when it's still wet even this I'm Gonna Keep On scraping this morning because what I don't want to do is deal with it when it's cold when it dries it's for me it's I found it to be more of a pain so I'm gonna get a a sharp blade and get the rest of this off but that's pretty nice I'll rinse all that old trash off that's pretty nice and that's why I say my Burke Home Folks so the saying is every bit of eight inches what's left I use the automotive scraper used for gaskets and stuff and what's left is that gray is basically propolis you get through the brown silty stuff that comes off easy then there's a hard layer of brownish grayish now this is something I've learned over the years from uh way more seasoned beekeepers than myself but they say this is the greatest proper so when you get to that brown silty mixed with hard layer that's getting into the propolis I scrape it down to where I can start seeing through to the yellow and it and it's this works fine for doing frames I've never had a problem I just stick the whole thing in you know I break a piece off and stick it in with that in there and I would think that's even better so nice beautiful piece of Comb wax that is two years worth of two seasons worth of um burcon that I scrape and save and a little bit extra so there might have been about a quarter inch sheet in there from a cutout I had done I just thought about that when I was up here but that's it so let's even say 75 Burke home I know it was Burke home because that's all I put in there is is in that freezer is um in those bags it's vertical man I dump them out of the buckets when I go out there and inspect colonies I usually get Burke home early in the spring and then uh going into fall when I'm cleaning up colonies but during this and I'm in after the honey Harvest of course those little inspections in between there's not a lot left because you're in the hives more often than not but so that just goes to show that the little bit of Burke home you get if you just save it you know how much wax you'll get maybe you have to save it a few years to get it I don't know um that's averaging 35 40 colonies that I'm pulling Burke home from so that's a good take I've said it from the day I started making these videos three years ago was save your bird comb I'm not going to say who it was but there's a fella that was doing videos and he was just throwing all his bark home like he'd scrape it and throw it yeah don't worry about that and he just throw it and just throw it nah and he was he was just throwing it I'm like oh my goodness stop throwing it I'm watching money go out to go out the window so anyway all right guys that's gonna be it I hope you enjoyed that little video of a tedious task I've started uh January will really start getting into the uh work of getting ready for spring I take about two to three months where I don't do a whole lot of anything in the in the bees or in the duties and things that got to be done but January we start getting really busy all the wax is done now you may ask why didn't you do that in your big melter well I guess I could have done the final rendering in there but I don't like doing the nasty stuff in my big in my new one because that's uh that's two years old now I've kept it pretty clean and I like to keep it that way um so that I got good clean uh cappings wax going out into my uh sales stuff that I sell candles and and lip balm and those kinds of things but anyway that's going to do it uh Christmas for me right now it's a couple days away but it should have already happened it should have already passed by the time you see this video so I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas I sure do I hope you guys have a happy and great New Year I wish all of you the best and just many blessings to come in the year 2023 so it's Barry's best honey I'm Mike and I do bees but not today we do wax y'all have a wonderful wonderful rest of the Year and have a happy happy New Year may God bless you and we'll see y'all later [Music]

Channel: Mike Barry

Views: 5,527

Keywords: beekeeping, bee hives, queen bee, queen, swarm, comb, honeycomb, brood, honeybees, honey, hive stand, bee suit, veil, hive, hives, hive tool, smoker, pheromone, hive beetle, varroa, mite

Id: vzBREHtcoMs

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022