Lughnasa                                                             Harvest Moon

Those of you who paint or sew or fix things or build sheds, who repair the lock or restore the engine to its former glory, you may not understand the pride I feel in this candle.  It’s a simple thing and making it was a simple process though not without its attendant dilemmas.

Here’s the thing:  I made this candle.  Well, ok, I had help from the bees of Artemis Honey and an assist on the wick thing from Kate, but otherwise I made this candle.  It represents a satisfying process that began when a friend of Kate’s helped me get started in beekeeping 5 years ago.  Since then, I’ve saved wax against the day I could make candles.

Making things with my own hands daunts me, I feel more comfortable with words or ideas, plants or organizations.  That meant I kept putting off the candle making.  How do you render wax?  This year I found out.  What’s involved in making a candle?  Likewise this year I found out.

When this candle slid out of the mold, formed and perfect, looking exactly like, well, a candle, I jumped up and down.  It was beautiful.

I like projects where my involvement takes place over a long arc.  Organizing a new political entity or committee or economic development group.  Planting perennials having first amended the soil, then tending them as they grow.  Writing a novel in which every word started with me.  It’s that long term, personal engagement that makes me feel good.

The candle represents learning how to keep bees, caring for them from year to year, collecting excess wax as we extracted honey or as I did hive inspections.  I saved the wax and kept it until I could learn the other steps necessary.  The result is a candle made from a material for which I know the source and in which I had a collaborative hand.  That makes this candle and the others made this year, too, a new experience for me.  And a good one.

Lughnasa                                                              New (Harvest) Moon

Five of the six honey supers contain little or no honey and are cleaned up, ready for storage.  I set them along the fence to let the bees that are in them return to the colony.  Lower dewpoint makes for so much more comfort inside the bee suit.  A happier experience.

The sixth super, which had a lot of uncapped honey a couple of weeks ago has 5 frame sides capped, the rest uncapped.  The queen excluder came off and the super went back on as winter stores for the hive.  We can change this decision of course, but it seems wise to let the bees have a surplus rather than a shortage.

Even with the resistance work I do three times a week lifting the supers up and down, then, as I did in all visits to the colony, back up onto the increasingly tall hive structure challenges me.  Four colonies might be more than I can reasonably handle.  Besides, what would we do with 340 pounds of honey?

Lughnasa                                                                    New (Harvest) Moon

Decent dewpoints today so I’m going to check the bee’s progress on cleaning up the four supers we extracted on August 21st.  A service that bees provide is cleaning up and drying out extracted frames.  They do this to make them serviceable for another season just as they would if they were within a hive in a natural setting.  Then, I can take them off and store them until the honey harvest next August.

I’ll also check today to see what the colony has done with the two frames of partially filled and uncapped frames I put back on rather than extract.  Uncapped honey in the super usually has a higher water content.  Anything with more than 18.6% moisture is technically not honey because it will ferment.  Honey with less than 18.6% moisture will keep indefinitely.

If those frames are capped, we may extract them, or I may take out the queen excluder and just let them use this honey as stores for over wintering.  I’ll let you know what I find out.