Doug Henry:
FWIW today's solar wax melters do not decontaminate/clean
beeswax of many of todays residues due to lack of
pentration of sunlight needed to photodegregate, with a
prime example being fluvalinate.
I suppose FWIW also say beekeepers wanting premium price
for light beeswax should also avoid bleaching wax to
lighten with any bleach containing chlorine or using water
with fluorine added which is hard to do nowadays, with so
many municapalities/cities/towns adding things to help
peoples teeth and kill micro-organisms that effect human
health.
We were in the county adjacent to Tucson until this past
spring for several decades, but have recently moved to the
hills of S. Arizona where we now have our own wells for
water to avoid this scenario, wanting to get as rural with
our beekeeping as possible.
We process our beeswax using W.T.Kelly wax presses. We have
three. Two for underwater bath pressing; and one for
capping wax processing/honey seperation, prior to using the
slum from here, to then underwater bath in the other two
presses, while the wax seperated is directly used in
dipping pots or assembly line usage for making beeswax
foundation. We process the beeswax to old temps used early
on by beekeepers, and published back around the turn of the
1900s by both Roots and Dadants, and later written about by
E.B. Wedmore (who later charted the destruction of AFB, EFB
and Sac Brood with temps and time frame in honey, water and
just air).
We ended up using Dadants early temp range from
pre-1900),and this has worked best for us for both
lightening our wax if we want/droping out the
dirt/impurities (lightening not normally desired, as I
throw in handfuls of propolis to darken and gain
ductility/flexibility into our melting pots prior to making
foundation); but for retooling our outfit the darker wax is
desired as the bees draw it best and faster then the
lighter wax. So we heat to just below boiling or not quite
100C for about 10-15 minutes,and then cool and maintain
heat at 190F for several hours to lighten and drop the dirt
(one batch per day in 24 hour cycle). Then with wax still
in melter water bath, we put on the press plate and press
the wax (in double burlap sacks) several times, say minium
3, loosening and then tightening the press plate to let
water back into the sacks and out)to retrieve as much wax
as possible (the residue left being good for gardens by the
way so nothing is wasted and all is recycleable); then by
adding cold water with bottom feed in only and wax slowly
coming off top into wax pans we make our wax cakes for
later usage. Think this is the easiest I can explain.
Sincerely,
Dee A. Lusby
Small Cell Commercial Beekeeper
Moyza, Arizona
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organicbeekeepers/
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