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From:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 17 Nov 2000 23:22:43 -0500
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Greetings
        I posted recently about AFB in wax. I mentioned that I worked making foundation for 5 or 6 years. It's been 20 years now, so I don't remember the exact temperatures, but the process involved melting down raw wax in one thousand pound batches. The wax was placed in a large tank which contained a foot or so of water and at this point, temperatures probably were around boiling (100 C/212 F). The melted wax then went into a large agitator tank where we added activated charcoal, diatomateous earth, and powdered clay. This slurry was pumped through a commercial filter press (layers of paper between aluminum plates) which removed the powders along with most impurities, such as propolis. The temperature here was probablyaround 250+ F. The result was much lighter colored than what went in. We used brown to dark yellow wax to make the straw colored wax for foundation. Lighter grades - lemon yellow would come out almost pure white by this process. This was mostly used in the candle business, where any off white hues would affect the color of the candle (we had some 30 colors we featured). So the processing was designed to remove the color, not the AFB spores. But I doubt AFB could survive this much processing. Plus, only a small percent of the wax would have come from infected hives. I don't have any scientific data on this, but I have been looking for it.

Peter Borst
Ithaca, NY USA

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