Goody Bags for Short Course

Our MABA Short Course is this Saturday - it's been full at about 110 people for the last two weeks.  Julia and I are chairing it for next year so we have to pay close attention this year to make sure we have an idea of what we will be doing.

One of my volunteer tasks this year was to make the lip balm for the goody bags that the participants take home.  The bags have a lot of items in them - catalogs from bee companies, lists of local bee suppliers, resource lists of Internet and other resources (including this blog ;-}), a small jar of honey, a small candle, and a tube of lip balm - guess whose job it was to make the lip balm?

Mine.

So tonight I poured 100 tubes of lip balm.  We already have a few more to make up the 112 or so that we need.

First I melted wax in the Presto Pot:

Then I set up my pouring tray with fifty lip balm tubes (I get them from Majestic Mountain Sage).  I got orange tops for the tubes so they wouldn't get lost in the Goody bag!

So I melted the wax.  In a Dutch oven filled with simmering water, I put my oversized measuring cup.  I put into that 1/2 cup plus 4 T of sweet almond oil, 1 tsp honey, 1 tsp cocoa butter (had to heat it with my hair dryer to allow me to scoop out a teaspoon), 1 tsp vitamin E oil, 9 T beeswax, melted.

All of this sits in the hot water until I am ready to pour.  Then I pour it in the tubes.  Notice I set the pouring tray on a sheet of wax paper in a cookie sheet.  This makes for a clean work surface and any drips can be scraped off of the wax paper with a rubber spatula and remelted, but you couldn't do that off of the counter.

I scrape off the excess from the tray and remelt it.  Then I refill the tray, make the mixture again and fill another 50 tubes.  The recipe will fill about 40 - 50 tubes.

Finally I capped the tubes with the cute orange tops:

Tomorrow night I'll print and put on the labels, but for now, I'm off to bed.  If you try to make lip balm and have any helpful hints, please post them in the comments section below.

Making Lotion Bars - A Winter Beekeeper's Joy

Lotion bars are quick to make and a holiday gift that the recipients love to get.  The ingredients are only three:

1/3 oil (avocado or sweet almond oil are best)
1/3 butter (shea butter, cocoa butter - I like a half and half combination)
1/3 melted beeswax.

Equipment needed:

A boiling water bath
A large measuring cup
Chopsticks to use for stirring
Molds for the bars (commercial ones can be purchased or you can use ice cube trays)

One caution:  These smell great because of the cocoa butter.  Once I gave one to someone and she took a bite out of it!  Important that your recipient knows they are lotion (although nothing in the bar would be bad for eating!)

These take a short time and are fun to do.  Here's a slideshow of the process:

The Eternal, Never-Ending, Beyond Challenging Saga of the Wax Block

So it's honey contest time of year and once again I face the challenge of the wax block.

A man sent an email to me telling me that he had poured a gorgeous wax block by putting the wax, unmelted into the mold in the oven and turning the oven on to 150 degrees. When the wax had melted in the mold, he turned off the oven and put a pane of glass over the mold. It was, he said, the perfect block.

The Georgia Beekeepers Association had its fall meeting and honey contest this past weekend. In preparation for it, I tried the melt-the-wax-in the mold plan - TWICE. Both times the block had a huge crack in it. You can see the crack in the melting wax in the photo below.

So I went back to the tried and mostly good method I've been using in the past few years. First I melted the wax in my converted Presto Pot.  I want a good block for the Metro Atlanta picnic, auction and honey contest this weekend.

While the wax was melting, I put my Pyrex measuring cup (8 cup) in a pan of hot water so that the wax would not harden the minute it filtered into the measuring cup.

I put a large pan with about an inch of water in it into my basement oven and turned the oven on to 195. I also put the glass brownie pan I was using into the pan of water to heat up as well.

When the wax was all melted, I fitted the measuring cup with silk, held to the cup with a large rubber band. You can see the end of the wax as it finally finishes filtering in the picture below.

I poured the melted wax from the measuring cup into the glass mold in the hot water bath in the oven, covered it with a pane of glass, and left it overnight to cool and harden.

The next morning the mold looked like the perfect block. There were no ripples on the surface (I covered the mold with a pane of glass in the oven as it cooled over night). Here it is sitting in the freezer to release the wax block from the mold.

Oh, NO, not again (and again and again). The perfect block has wax blemishes on the sides where the wax has adhered to the pan.

It's on three sides - MOAN and GROAN and MOAN some more. I simply can't pour a good wax block this year. This is pour THREE (at least it's not 18, I hear you thinking).

Look at the no-ripple top. Doesn't it make you sick to think that I have to do it all over again?

So tonight I repoured this light wax into a brand new no-stick pan. (I actually think the secret to a good wax block may be to use a new pan every time)  At the same time I also melted some slightly yellower wax and poured a brand new Pyrex round casserole used as a mold. I am cooling and hardening the square block in the hot water bath in the oven with a pane of glass over it and I am cooling and hardening the yellower wax on my workbench. It is also in a hot water bath with a plastic cover over it.

So we are up to FIVE pours. I refuse to do 18 this year.

Sorry about the pictures - Picasa lets me down again.  I'll upload them one at a time from my computer.

Observations about the Wax Tube Fastener

After using the wax tube fastener (which came with no directions) for a few years, I am learning some additional helpful hints and want to pass them on to you. If you want to see my original wax tube fastener saga, you can find it here.

Today we waxed strips into 65 frames for the hives in South Georgia.  To do that many takes a lot of wax.  I melted the wax in my converted Presto Pot that I bought on EBay.

I never use canned vegetables in my kitchen, but I bought a can of asparagus just to satisfy my wax tube fastener need.  You can see the now empty can of asparagus being put to use as a wax container in the photo below.  It's just the right depth for the wax tube fastener.

However, as we worked through the 65 frames, we had to refill the can several times.  As the hot wax level lowered in the can, it was no longer high enough to fill the wax tube fastener completely with wax.  The consequence of this was that the wax residue in the upper part of the tube near the handle solidified, interrupting the vacuum created when you cover the invisible hole on the black handle.

You can see in the photo below from the wax residue on the outside of the asparagus can that the molten wax was about half way up the pipe end of the WTF.

 
To combat this problem, I had two pans of boiling water going on the stove while we worked.  One pan was simply boiling water.  The other heated water contained the filled asparagus can with the wax tube fastener inside the can.

I refilled the can every time it got to about this depth (see photo below).  Because at this point the WTF was not functioning well since the vacuum had been disrupted, while I refilled the asparagus can, I put the WTF in the other pan of boiling water.  This served to melt the wax in the pipe so that the flow could start again.  I lifted the WTF out of the boiling water and allowed every drop to flow out of it before returning it to the melted wax in the can.

This process was much less frustrating than having the tube suddenly appear to quit working.  I also kept a toothpick around to run in and out of the hole in the handle occasionally to keep that path clear as well.

 
My parents grew up in the Depression and instilled in me an approach of "Waste not, want not," so I didn't want to lose any of this precious wax.  It's all I have and when it's gone then I'll have to figure out another way to stick the wax starter strips in the frame grooves.


Meanwhile in the roasting pan that I used to hold the frames I was waxing, I line the bottom with a piece of waxed paper.  We, of course, dripped wax all over the waxed paper.  When the job was done, I put the paper lining, covered with wax drippings, into the freezer.

After an hour in the freezer, the wax dripping just popped off the paper.  I put the peeled and popped off wax into the Presto Pot for future melted wax needs.  I always let the wax cool in the pot, ready to be remelted for the next waxing occasion.
 

And from the Depression era thinking, I am now letting the water cool in both pans from the stove.  In the morning, I'll peel the cooled wax off of the top of the water and add that to my wax collection.

Lotion for Last Minute Christmas Gifts

I've heard from some of you wondering why I haven't posted in so long and some of you have resorted to commenting on old posts, forced, I guess, to read old stuff since nothing new has been put up.

I suppose I could tell you that my office was burglarized and my laptop and external hard drive (my backup) stolen and that I have been underwater since Thanksgiving trying to put my "real" job back together.....but (although the story's true) it sounds a little like the dog ate my homework, so I'll just apologize for the gap in posting and take up my blogging again with my usual commitment!

I decided to make lotion as a last minute Christmas gift for stocking stuffers.  I had some red palm oil.  The last time I made lotion with red palm oil, the lotion was bright yellow and a little too oily, so I changed the recipe a bit to make it better.

Below you can see the oils all melting together.  The shea butter is the last to liquefy.



I melted the wax this time in my Presto pot - much faster.  However I always forget how long it takes lotion to cool and thicken.  I started at 7 PM and wasn't jarring the lotion until 12:30 at night!



I always use chopsticks for stirring.  This results in a cheap (free if you don't count the cost of a Chinese dinner), disposable piece of equipment.



Here's the bright yellow lotion, cooling in the running blender for HOURS and HOURS....until, like I said: 12:30 AM.  I used lemongrass essential oil to give it a good smell and it turned out quite lovely.

It's Wax Block Time Again!

The Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' club honey contest is on Sunday and I haven't given myself enough time to pour the wax block 18 times like I did (literally) last year. I gathered all of the wax from my solar wax melter adventures this year and put it in the converted Presto pot I have for melting wax. (From Ebay) It's a lovely collection, isn't it?



After a short time melting, here's the lovely golden melting wax - just a little bit to go.


Last year at the Georgia Beekeepers' Association Fall Meeting, I heard Robert Brewer (a certified Welsh honey judge) talk about how to filter melted wax. In the past I've used panty hose, but Robert said to filter your wax through silk. It's hard to find silk today.

I went to Hancock's and they didn't even have silk lining material. Then a sales woman said, "I believe they did send us a small bolt by mistake." She went to some stack of fabric and pulled out white silk, exactly what I needed. I wanted white because I didn't want to discolor my wax by putting it through a filter with dye in it.

The converted Presto Pot has a spout on it and you can see the liquid gold pouring onto the silk filter. I did this late at night (11:30) and now the wax has been poured into a brownie sized pan and will cool until morning.



I never get it right the first time, so I can pour it again tomorrow, Friday and Saturday on my way to the Sunday contest! The pressure's on, though, because I can only pour it over a couple of times, rather than my record-setting eighteen last year!

The Failure of Pour Number EIGHT~~~~

Persistent about this wax block, I poured wax block number 8 last night. I put wax block number 7 in my adapted Presto pot that I bought on EBay and turned the heating element onto low. The wax melts beautifully in this pot and you have a spigot to use to transfer the wax into your pouring container.


Branching out, I decided to try a loaf pan. I lubricated the sides and corners with dishwashing detergent, as many websites suggest. Oh, horrors! In the folds that make the corners of this bread pan, there are leaks. Wax oozes out of the sides and gathers on the surface of the hot water bath. I feel discouraged.



The rules for a wax block include that it must not be over 2 inches tall. I marked the 2 inch mark on the outside of the loaf pan and the finished product is EXACTLY 2 inches. I couldn't believe my good luck and thought maybe this was the final one, but.......


At the end of the block were these wax stuck flaws. I will try again tonight. ;-{

Pouring Wax Block for Young Harris

I'm leaving for the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute on Wednesday night. I'll take the course for the Journeyman Certification (Journeywoman??) and stay for the lectures about beekeeping. I really enjoyed it last year and learned a lot. This year will be a lot harder.

I've spent time documenting my public service credits - you have to have five for Journeywoman. I put together a notebook with the documentation in it - I gave talks at the Atlanta History Center, a garden club in Stone Mountain, an elementary school in DeKalb County; I am doing ongoing work with a Dunwoody Girl Scout troop; and my blog has been accepted as a public service credit by the powers that be. (Whoo Hoooo!) Just for insurance, I also documented one of the three swarms I collected (you can count 2 swarm collections as public service credits).

Just for fun, I thought I would enter a wax block in the honey contest there. Virginia Webb, a world champion honey producer in N Georgia (her honey won best in the world at Apimondia a couple of years ago) enters wax blocks in the Young Harris contest, so mine will not hold a candle (ha, ha) to hers, but I thought I'd try. So I melted my wax in my Presto pot and followed what I have learned from pouring so many blocks - this is the 11th pouring I've done.

While the wax was melting, I heated the pan for the mold in the oven at 300 degrees along with the measuring cup into which I would pour the wax from the Presto pot.


I boiled two full teapots of water on the stove to put in the cooling pan. The wax block sets up best when the mold is in a pan of hot water in the way that one would bake a custard. Before the wax was finished melting, I put the mold (coated with a slight coat of Pam) into the larger pan and filled it with one pot of boiling water.


The melted wax was then poured from the hot measuring cup into the mold and I poured a second pot of boiling water into the surrounding pan. See the steam rising?


I'll leave the wax until the morning when it should be completely cooled and then remove it from the mold pan and polish it with panty hose. I've also bought a new queen sized pair of panty hose to carry the block to the contest in one of the stocking legs. This should keep the sheen from polishing it and should protect it from marking on our journey to Young Harris.

You can see from the last picture that the wax poured evenly and is cooling evenly. That is the secret to a good wax block. With my luck, I'll turn it out tomorrow and there will be some flaw on the top. Oh, well, I'll probably enter it anyway!

I'm also entering one of two photos that I like of bees on flowers. I'll pick one before the deadline on Friday. I've printed my two favorites out so I'll have both with me.



Post Script: I popped the wax out of the mold to find that it had stuck on two sides and I couldn't pour it again before I left for Young Harris.....so I won't enter it this year and instead I will just take my bee picture to enter in the photography section of the contest.