Bee Lore

At the weekend, our local beekeeping group held their annual honey show.  I met a very interesting lady who was the “wax mistress” – with some beautiful exhibits made from beeswax.  I was intrigued to know how to separate wax from honey and pollen – as I have a whole load of this mixture that I have collected over the past year from the hive and from the honey extracting process.  She told me one of her tricks.  She advised me to put the wax in a baker’s tin which has the bottom cut out – and to line the tin with lint (from the chemists), fuzzy side up.  The lint is kept in place with a piece of string.  The baker’s tray is then hung from the top rack of your oven with a wire coat hanger.  Below is the collecting  tray or bowl – which has a small amount of rainwater in the bottom to stop the wax from sticking.  The oven is set at 50 degrees Centigrade and the wax should melt through the lint and into the collecting tray, floating on top of the rainwater.  This all sounds quite obvious once you hear it – but would take ages of trial-and-error to come up with it from scratch.