Blane White wrote:
>Which indicates to me that the melter works by heating the air
> to melt the wax.  You want the interior of the box dark to absorb the
> solar energy and heat the air.  I would probably leave the outside light
> but the unit would work better if the inside were dark.

You are trying to heat the frames and wax first. Everything else is
secondary and a waste of available energy.

The color of the interior is dependent on what you want to heat. If the
interior is black, you will heat the walls of the box very well and also
lose heat through the walls more rapidly, especially if the exterior is
also black. If the walls are white and/or reflective, then what is in
the interior gets the rays from the sun and that heats up (the frames
and wax) but the walls remain "cool" and less energy is available for
transfer to the exterior. Add a brick or two, as Jim suggested, and the
heat will be longer lasting but the maximum temperatures will be arrived
at later than if the bricks were not there. There is only a specific
quantity of energy available in the box from the sun, so if you heat the
walls then that portion will not be available to the frames and wax that
you want to heat. Same with the bricks.

It is interesting that old frames are usually dark, as is brood comb, so
it should be what captures most of the heat from the sun's rays (with a
white interior, the best of all worlds).

You will not see any problems in lower latitudes because of the amount
of energy available, but as you move north, you want the maximum heat to
be on the frames and wax, not the walls.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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