Lughnasa Honey Moon
I’ve been on vacation. A bee vacation. Kate and I started prepping on Tuesday, extracted
on Wednesday, cleaned up and dried honey on Thursday and spent some of this morning finishing clean up and rendering wax.
This cappings tank functions as a solar oven, letting the honey drip down from the cappings through slots and holes in a tray that sits inside the tank and under the lid.
Yesterday I watched a youtube video on wax rendering and a guy used a two-hundred dollar solar oven for separating wax from impurities. I thought, hey. I can do this with my cappings tank.
So I copied his screen mesh covered with a layer of paper towel, put that on the tray under the lid and put the cappings and gathered wax from other times on it. And voila! Pure yellow wax is now gathering, floating on water in the tank, the only energy source the sun. No pots, no double boilers, no crock pots, no fancy insulated tanks.
Four years ago I bought candle molds with the intention of making, well, candles. I have a new skill learning resistance when I’m learning too many things at once and the wax rendering, candle making hit my barrier every time we finished extracting. Too weary.
This time though Kate and I had the extracting figured out, made it work, so I could learn how to dry honey and render wax. Next is making candles from the wax. With the rendering so simple, it will become a regular part of the extracting process. As will candle making.
So we learned two new skills this extracting season.
