Making Beeswax Candles

January 5, 2019 Eric Miller

One of the fun things about being a beekeeper in a northern climate is the annual winter recess. It’s an opportunity to relax a little, evaluate last year’s mistakes and successes, plan the next year, and make stuff. And there are plenty of things to make. Hives, hive stands, fondant, and bee club presentations are all things I end up spending at least a little time on each winter. But the most fun winter project for me is making candles. I get all my capping wax cleaned and melted into blocks in the summertime using a homemade solar melter; that means I can spend a pleasant weekend each winter transforming that clean material into candles—an underrated product of the hive, if you ask me.

Below is a basic how-to for making candles out your beeswax, with links to some of the items you’ll need. Before you get started, I highly recommend you watch this great video by Booger Hill Bee Company. He does a first-rate job explaining his process.

How To Make Beeswax Candles

Step 1: Use a double-boiler and burner to melt your wax. If the top pot on your double-boiler doesn’t have a good pouring lip, you’ll also need a pouring pot for filling your molds. (TIP: Don’t use the same pots you use to cook food. Instead, go to a thrift store and find used pots for pennies on the dollar.)

Step 2: Thread your wick through the candle mold. For the 10” colonial tapers shown here, you need #2/0 square wick. There are special needles available to thread wicks through shorter molds; however, tall molds like these tapers may require you to pull the wick through with a piece of wire. Slide the end of the wick into a bobby pin, pull it snug, and center it in the mold. (TIP: Different types of candles require different types of wicks, so be sure you buy the correct wick for your chosen mold.)

Step 3: Put a couple short blasts of mold release spray into your mold.

A finished 10-inch colonial taper candle

Step 4: Put a rubber band around the top of your mold (which is really the bottom of the candle). These molds have slits that allow you to remove the candle after it’s cooled, so the rubber band ensures these slits are closed tightly and evenly.

Step 5: Pour your melted wax into the mold, filling it to the top. The wax may shrink a bit as it cools, resulting in a “pothole” at the top of the mold. I typically come back and fill this hole with more wax to make sure I don’t have hollow bases on my candles.

Step 6: Remove the candle from the mold. Once your candle is completely cooled (I go away and do other things, and then come back in about an hour), remove the rubber band. Pull the mold apart at the splits, grab the wick at the top of the mold (bottom of the candle) and firmly pull it straight out.

Step 7: Reset for the next candle. When you pull the candle from the mold in Step 6, you’ll also pull a new section of wick through the mold (this is great, because you don’t have to use the wire to thread wick for each candle). Use scissors to cut the wick so there’s 1/2 inch sticking out the top of the candle. Carefully pull the bobby pin out of the finished candle and attach it to the new section of wick. Then simply repeat the process starting at Step 3!

I find these colonial tapers to be perfect for home use, as they throw good light and burn for about 10 hours. Plus, in my opinion, they have a traditional, classy aesthetic that can’t be matched by tea lights, animal molds, etc. Each candle uses less than 3 oz of wax, so even hobby beekeepers have enough wax most years to make candles for gifts, emergency lighting, table settings, or to burn on cold winter nights while they’re planning the next beekeeping season.

Best Gifts for Beekeepers, 2018

November 30, 2018 Eric Miller

Christmas is just a few weeks away. Buying a gift for a beekeeper is actually very easy, but only if you’re a beekeeper yourself. For non-beekeepers, buying bee-related gifts can be puzzling due to the almost-cryptic nature of the hobby. So for anyone wondering what to get their favorite beekeeper, here are my top 5 beekeeping gift ideas for 2018. They span various price ranges, from about $10 up to $200. I avoided pest and disease management products on this list because of the largely divided ethos of treatment versus treatment-free; you wouldn’t want to give a beekeeper a package of miticide and then find out she is passionately anti-treatment. All of these gifts are pretty much controversy-free and would be immediately useful to just about any beekeeper.

By the way, if you’re reading this in the future, you can also check out my beekeeper gift picks for 2019 and 2020.

Top Picks, $10-$20

Beekeeping Journal: Beekeepers keep track of things, usually by writing them down. This tracking can be as simple as how many hives they’re currently running, or as complicated as a detailed breakdown of each frame in each hive. Any paper will technically work, and many beekeepers use a generic notebook for their record keeping. But you can spice things up and make this important tool a little more special by getting them a bee-themed journal. $13 with Amazon Prime free shipping.

My EZ Pry hive tool in its natural environment

EZ Pry Hive Tool: Every single beekeeper uses a hive tool pretty much every time they work their hives. It’s probably the most-used piece of equipment in a beekeeper’s toolbox, and is critical for cracking open hives, scraping comb and propolis, and pulling frames. I’ve tried a lot of different styles of hive tools, and the EZ Pry is my favorite. It’s on par with other tools for opening hives and scraping boxes, but it excels at pulling frames. The EZ Pry has two extra angles that standard hive tools lack. The resulting Z-shaped bar provides leverage for prying propolized frames out of a hive body, and does it with less damage to the wooden frames than most other tools. Beekeepers are constantly misplacing their hive tool, so if you only get one item from this list, get this one. $17 plus shipping from Mann Lake.

Top Pick, $20-$50

Proper handwear can make beekeeping more enjoyable

Extended Cuff Nitrile Gloves: This might seem odd to non-beekeepers, but hear me out. The inside of a bee hive is a sticky and sometimes hazardous place. Beekeepers are often faced with the decision to either wear traditional lambskin gloves to keep their hands protected, or to work bare-handed. The downside to traditional beekeeping gloves is that, while they offer a lot of protection, they rob you of the ability to make fine manipulations in the hive—imagine dipping mittens in a bucket of glue and then playing Jenga. Bare hands, alternatively, give you a great deal of fidelity in the hive. That is, until your fingers are coated in honey and propolis. Bare hands are also nice targets for angry bees trying to protect their home, so there’s that to consider too. A few years ago, I heard commercial beekeeper and researcher Randy Oliver recommend nitrile gloves as a compromise between heavy lambskin and bare hands. These gloves, in my experience, have been invaluable during hive inspections. If they get too sticky, I can just slide on a new glove. And I’ve only been stung one time through these gloves in three years of wearing them, all while maintaining a superior tactile experience in my hives. $23 for a pack of 100 with Amazon Prime free shipping.

Top Pick, $50-$100

Paul Kelly bee belt sold at Dancing Bee Equipment

Paul Kelly Bee Belt: This is the one product on this list that I don’t actually use myself. It’s definitely a luxury item compared to the other gift ideas. The bee belt by Paul Kelly is more widely used in Canada, but has started gaining some notoriety here in the United States over the last couple years. The best feature of the belt is its ability to hold a hive tool with a built-in magnet. It’s got other pockets and compartments, but the tool holder alone is just about worth the price of admission, in my opinion. I’ve almost bought one of these a couple times, but talked myself out of it for pragmatic reasons (i.e. I can just put my hive tool in my back pocket). In that way it makes a great gift—most beekeepers wouldn’t buy one for themselves, but would love to find one under the Christmas tree. The Paul Kelly bee belt is available in the United States through a couple retailers. $83 plus shipping.

Top Pick, $100-$200

Broodminder data displayed on a smart phone

Broodminder-W: Weighing a hive offers insight into a few key questions. Is the hive ready for winter? Did my colony swarm? Is there a nectar flow on, or are we in a dearth? Broodminder may be best known for its hive temperature sensors, but for my money you get the most bang-for-your-buck out of the scale, called the Broodminder-W. It’s pretty easy to use for anyone with a smart phone. And while it’s not cheap, most beekeepers can get all the data they need out of a single scale—even if they have more than one hive. That’s because one scale in a bee yard will show whether there’s nectar coming into the hives. This is very useful when deciding when to add honey supers, and can keep a beekeeper from missing a honey flow in the spring. In the summer a drop in weight signals when to remove supers and avoid feeding them back to the bees during a dearth. $179 plus shipping.

Keeping Entrances Free of Snow

November 12, 2018 Eric Miller

Hive with a snow visor on the left, without on the right

We had our first real snowfall of the new winter today. About 3-4 inches. I’ve posted a couple times before about the “snow visors” I built for some of my hives. I built them last year because I had several hives that were too far away to check after every every snowfall. I’ve since moved all my hives into the same yard, but some of them still have the visors attached. When I went out today to clear all the entrances, I was once again impressed by how well my little invention works. In the picture above, the hive on the left is fitted with a snow visor. The hive on the right is not. Notice how the hive on the right has its entrance completely blocked, but the one on the left is totally free of snow. Of course, the success of these visors is somewhat dependent on how much wind we have during a snowstorm, but mostly I’ve found them to be very effective at keeping hive entrances open for the bees. If you live in an area with real winters, and if you can’t check your hives every time it snows, these snow visors may be a cheap way to ensure your bees have freedom of movement after a snowstorm.

Controlling Hive Moisture in the Winter

October 20, 2018 Eric Miller

Condensation on an inner cover in cool weather

Winterizing Hives; Why I Use Vented Supers

I’ve taken some heat about the way I winterize my honey bee hives. Specifically, there are people who can’t fathom why I’d intentionally put vents above the nest. And frankly I understand why they’d be skeptical, because on the surface it doesn’t make sense to encourage air flow in a hive you’re trying to keep warm. But it starts to make more sense when you factor in moisture. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a colony is pretty adept at surviving the cold, but horrible at surviving the cold when wet. If you’ve ever been camping in the fall and woken up early in the morning with condensation inside your tent and sleeping bag, you can relate.

The picture above shows the inside of an inner cover absolutely saturated with water. I found this—and several others—inside hives I’ve been winterizing over the last week. What causes this water build-up? First, the bees eat honey for the energy they need to generate heat. Some of the water in the honey gets breathed back into the surrounding air. Then the relatively warm air around the bees carries the water vapor up to the top of the hive. The humid warm air hits the top of the hive, which is cold from the outside air. This is a recipe for condensation…warm moist air contacting a cold surface. The danger of this condensation is that—like the ceiling of a tent—it’ll start dripping down on the winter cluster of bees. The bees that get hit don’t stand much chance to survive, and over time these losses could shrink the cluster to the point it can’t withstand the cold anymore.

To combat this cycle of wetness, I make a “winter sandwich” on top of my hives. The picture below shows a vented super above my hive bodies. I'll plug and open the vent holes throughout the winter to try and manage the temperature and moisture inside the hives. Of the eight vents, I almost always keep seven of them plugged with rubber stoppers. The eighth vent I leave open on front of the hive—this is to discourage any air flow from crossing over the cluster while still venting moist air before it can condense. The vented super also gives me space to put fondant for for winter feeding.

Above the vented super is the inner cover, which provides a top entrance in case the bottom entrance gets obstructed. Then comes a moisture board and a piece of foam insulation. The insulation is meant to keep the inner cover warmer than the outer walls of the hive, thereby directing any condensation to to walls where the bees can use it for water without it posing a significant threat to the cluster.

The Proof is in the Pudding

The most recent figures from the Bee Informed Partnership show beekeepers in my state, Missouri, suffered a winter loss of over 23% last year. Just a bit up the road in Iowa, that loss was an astonishing 54%. Meanwhile, my winter loss rate is about 5%. Honestly I don’t expect to lose hives in the winter like most beekeepers do (though it does happen every now and then). While I have little doubt that mite management plays the biggest role in winter survival, I do believe my winter hive setup—with its attention on controlling moisture—plays some role in my overwintering success. If I’m proven wrong by myself or others, rest assured I’ll change my ways, because my goal isn’t to be right about this; it’s to have each colony flying come spring.

Goldenrod: Flower of Last Resort?

September 29, 2018 Eric Miller

Goldenrod soldier beetles dominate the flowers in August and early September

Of all the flowers in the United States, goldenrod is probably the second-most spoken of by beekeepers (the first is clover). But the funny thing is it usually goes untouched by bees. Or at least by my bees. I have goldenrod blooming here from August through October, and I check it often for foragers. It’s the soldier beetle I see dominating the goldenrod, covering the plants in a moving mass of feeding and mating through mid-September. Bees, on the other hand, are hard to find on the yellow flowers for most of their bloom period. It’s not until late September that I start seeing honey bees on goldenrod, suggesting it’s a little-desired flower for honey bees in my area. Only when there’s not much else to forage does goldenrod becomes a menu option. I’m not disparaging goldenrod. On the contrary, I’m grateful it’s available so late into the year; but it hasn’t been the panacea for fall honey harvests or winter food stores often touted by magazines, websites, and presentations at beekeeping clubs.

Honey bees don’t start showing up on my goldenrod flowers until late September