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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Richard Cryberg <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 17:49:03 -0800
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The real question with the contaminated wax is do these contaminants actually harm anything.  If they are tied up in the wax and do not diffuse out into honey or larval food what difference do they make?  So the question is how could the diffusion rate be checked in a fairly real world situation without needing the keys to Fort Knox to fund the study?  It seems to me you could take a sample of uncapped comb and cut it up into sections of a handy size.  Take samples of this comb and have them analyzed for what ever contaminants you are interested in.  Take the remainder and simply soak in a known volume of water with very mild agitation.  Pull a sample of that water periodically, probably based on some log time scale, filter the water to remove wax particles and run the water thru a Sep-Pak to concentrate the residues.  You could probably send the Sep-Pak directly to the lab doing the analytical work as they should be used to dealing with these things. 
 If some components of interest have pH issues you could easy enough buffer the extraction water to a safe pH.  I would do this with old brood comb as a worst case.   Old brood comb is loaded up with all kinds of cocoons and dirt and non wax components that should make it a worst case in terms of fast diffusion.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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