Gadgets & Gizmos for Beekeeping

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There’s another substance besides honey and wax in bee hives. It’s  called “Propolis”, super-sticky brown stuff that the bees manufacture and use to seal the edges of the hive or any other holes that they think should not be there. Some swear it has ancient medicinal properties. It was used as an antiseptic during the civil war. It’s impermeable to water and impossible to scrape off.   

We tried everything to clean up propolis.     

• Vinegar
• Orange Peels
• Denatured Alcohol
• Detergent
• Club Soda
• Hydrogen Peroxide
• Mineral Spirits
• Baking Soda
• Armorall

• Ammonia
• Turpentine
• Bleach
• Toluene
• Paint Thinner
• WD-40
• Acetone

We did discover what will completely clean the propolis off your bee gloves?   

Alcohol.   

No, the expensive foreign stuff we drink isn’t strong enough. We tried that, too.   Get the cheap stuff (98¢ a quart at Wal-Mart). You need 91% isopropyl alcohol. Don’t drink it even though it is 182 proof.  It is poison.   But it works quickly and easily. Some stains may require a little bleach.    But the gunky stuff will be gone!! 

We also manufactured another way 

to get honey out of crushed comb. 

  This was not  an original idea.   Crush the comb with honey still in it. Put the mixture in a cheese cloth bag and hang it overnight above a glass or aluminum pan.  

 Or, put the cheese cloth bag into a large old can.  Then press the bag inside the can using an antique bottle capper  with a wood dowel as a plunger against a 4” round divot.  

  This idea is a Blue Frog Honey Acres  original.  

And, how do you render the wax?   

Build a wood box. Give it a double-paned glass lid.  Paint it black for use as a solar wax melter.

Load the whole comb inside  into a glass or aluminum pan. 

Leave the whole thing outside to sit in the sun  for half an afternoon.

  Re-heat the residue in a pan of water.

The wax will float.  Lift the sheet of wax out of the water. Float it in another pan. Warm it well again to remove leftover impurities. Cool it. Lift out the cleaned wax sheet, ready for further use.

 This works.    

This is newer comb. Young bees have already emerged from it, as you can see.

 The nectar in this newer comb is NOT cured.

Some capped and uncapped honey in cells can be seen across the top of this comb.   Many orange – brown colored brood cells in rows beneath and down the middle. Lots of dark empty cells lie towards the side and bottom.   Many generations of bees have already hatched from the dark, empty area. That’s why they’re empty now.    That’s why it’s dark -- old leftovers from cocoons of previous occupants. Bees re-use these wax cells again and again and again. They grow darker and more fibrous -- tougher with each generation.  This honey is what we must leave to the bees. It’s on comb that they use for propagation and for hive survival.  

This is not honey either. 

It is multi-colored, stored pollen -- a bitter but essential source of protein for our apis friends. 

Too much pollen spoils the taste of pure honey.

The substance that is glistening is raw nectar.

This comb is loaded exclusively with honey.   

[ Notice lack of pollen and the absence of brood. ] We can take this honey to consume immediately (within a few hours or days). Or we can wait patiently until the bees have capped all the cells. That means that the bees have determined that this honey has been dried and cured down to the proper level of humidity. Bees cap with wax honey cells that are less than 18% water.  

Susan examines a sample of our honey using a ‘refractometer’. It’s the tool that people who know what they’re doing use to measure accurately the level of water remaining in a sample of honey.     

We had to learn the hard way.

Even the bees sometimes abandon certain old combs.  Beginners, we didn’t know that. 

We didn’t know why.

We found some old comb with very little space used for honey.      We wanted to rotate out the old comb. So we proudly cut the comb out the honey areas in order to salvage the honey.     We planned to freeze the comb and re-cycle it back to the bees in the next Spring.  

It's our brand name.   The lyrics are paraphrased from Peter, Paul, and Mary:   

" I'm in love with a big blue frog,
A big blue frog loves me.
It's not as bad as it appears,
He's got rhythm and a Harvard degree.
 

The neighbors are against it 

and it's clear to me
And it's prob'ly clear to you  ...
They think value on their property

 will go right down,

 If the family next door is blue. "

When we started on this adventure, some neighbors in nearby Plymouth Township were petitioning to exclude beekeepers from their area. 

We figured it might be moving to Harleysville so we needed to rally a movement.  Thus, the name of our bee-herding business was crafted for the neighbors around here  – Blue Frog Honey Acres . . .  Who knows?