A Beekeeper's New Year

First let me share our beekeeper's cocktail:  a chunk of honey comb, an ounce of honey liqueur, a squirt of lemon juice and champagne.  This is what we started the New Year's dinner with at my daughter's house last night:

I'm celebrating many things about beekeeping:

1.  That I am a beekeeper and have this marvelous opportunity to peek into the lives of fascinating insects and be a part of their growth and progress

2.  That my friend Gina and I are editing the GBA Newsletter together and are having a fabulous time - getting to know beekeepers across the state, sharing the ways people in Georgia manage their bees, and learning about putting together both a newsletter and a website for it.

3.  That my son-in-law, Jeff, and I have gotten to work the bees together, harvest honey together, and do various bee projects together for the last couple of years.

4.  That Julia, Noah, and I will continue to do hive inspections for the Metro club together at the Chastain Conservancy - I love anything I get to do with the two of them

5.  That Julia and I will be in charge of the Metro Atlanta Short Course in January 2014, giving us a big project to work on together all year

6.  That I have 1002 people who subscribe to this blog through Google and 539 people who "follow" this blog - all people who are interested in learning more about bees and beekeeping through whatever I choose to post

My New Year's resolutions about beekeeping:

1.  To clean up my side bars on this blog - I'd like to take off links that aren't so useful and add some that are.  If you know of a particularly good web site for beekeeping that I should link to, please let me know.  Don't send my blogs that only have one or two posts a year, but if you do know active, helpful websites that I haven't listed, please help me with this resolution.

2.  To continue natural beekeeping, even if I lose hives in the process and to stick to my guns about not using poison, chemicals, etc. in my bee hives.  My hives at Stonehurst were part of a UGA study and showed up with lots of chemical residue in spite of my not adding anything and using no foundation.  I need to research what chemicals they may use in the gardens at Stonehurst....or maybe the bees are bringing in poison from the Atlanta Botanical Garden where there are no weeds.

3.  To try to learn to make a good lotion from beeswax, something I have not been able to achieve in a way that makes me happy

4.  To finish reading some of the bee books that I've started but haven't finished.

5.  To do a better beekeeping management job in 2013 - I was behind and never did some of the things I should have done to be a good beekeeper in 2012 - this will be a different year.

Happy New Year to everyone - if you want to share your beekeeping resolutions, please do - hearing what others are focused on is always inspiring to me.

Making Hand Cream

Another beekeeper's winter thing-to-do:  make hand cream.  I still don't have the process down but here's currently what I am doing.

The recipe I used (always in revision):

1 3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sweet almond oil
1/4 cup + 1 T cocoa butter
7 oz coconut oil
4 oz beeswax
2 T lanolin oil
2 T honey
1/2 cup or so of water

Melt the first seven ingredients together.  Pour into a blender container.  Blend until it starts to thicken.  Gradually blend in 1/2 cup water.  Blend for 20 minute increments and stop blender and cool mixture for about 5 minutes.  Continue until the lotion is thick enough to put into containers.  (This takes 4 to 4 1/2 hours).

If you simply pour the mix into the containers, it will be hard as a rock.  The blending is necessary, but I haven't figured out how to simplify this process.  Let me know what you try and what works for you.

The finished product can't be slathered onto your hands or they will remain rather greasy.  As in Brylcream, a "little dab'll do ya."  I use a fingertip's worth to lotion my two hands.

Meanwhile, here's the slide show (click to see it full sized and read the captions):

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.

Julia Child with Wax and Oil

I had four assignments at the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference:

1. To do a talk for the advanced beekeepers on How to Prepare Honey and Wax for Competition.

I enjoyed doing that so much. Most of the audience had never entered a honey contest. I was so grateful that I had gone to a lecture by Robert Brewer in 2008 at the state meeting of the Georgia Beekeepers Association and had heard him talk on the subject.

Most of all I was glad that I have entered honey contests ever since I started beekeeping five years ago. I've learned a lot from every wax pour and from pouring each jar of honey. And I've won a lot of ribbons! So I covered liquid honey, chunk honey, cut comb honey and wax blocks. I learned a lot by organizing what I know into a PowerPoint presentation.

2. To talk to the beginning beekeepers about Honey Harvest from the Bee Hive to the Jar.

Most of them were, as many new beekeepers are, a little overwhelmed by how to get the honey harvested. I of course talked about the simple honey harvest that I do. I used a PowerPoint to show them how to harvest with minimal clean-up, a simple approach to the bees, and honey without extraction. This talk was only about liquid honey. I also showed my movie on harvesting honey via Crush and Strain .

3. To talk and demonstrate how to make lip balm and lotion from the wax from the hive.

I felt a little like Julia Child, essentially cooking in front of everyone. The whole conference was there - advanced and beginners....so about 60 people.



I had a burner to use to melt the ingredients on, but in the end we used the much more effective stove in the kitchen. I showed them how it is helpful to use a chopstick to stir - chopsticks are just great and I use them a lot in various aspects of beekeeping.



Here I am, thanks to my friend from Beemaster, JP, who generously took these pictures. I am using a syringe to squirt the liquid lip balm into tiny lip balm containers. I had lots of help with this project. Brendhan and Eric manned the kitchen stove and cut wax, Janel went out to buy all the ingredients and supplies, and others help cap the containers when I was done.



I also mixed up lotion for everyone, but that takes about 2 1/2 hours to cool so they went on to other activities while the lotion was in the blenders for 2 or more hours. I had brought samples of the lotion bars that I had made at home a couple of nights before, so I used ice trays that I bought at WalMart to make everyone tiny lotion bars as well.



In the end all of the participants went home with a lip balm, a jar of lotion and a lotion bar. Everyone had fun doing this, I think.

4. I was supposed to help judge the honey show.

Dr. Mikhail Kruglyakov, a Robert Brewer trained honey judge, came to judge the show and I was to be his steward. I learned so much. I own a refractometer and didn't know how to use it and he showed me. He also showed me how to examine a jar of honey from start to finish and write notes about it for the entrant. He was a lovely person and very kind and encouraging. We had very few entries into the show but tried to write good comments to help the entrants learn for the next show.

I hope that I can take the Welsh honey judge training at Young Harris in 2011 (if I get Master Beekeeper this year - otherwise I'll be taking the exam again in 2011).

Preparing for the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference

On Saturday and Sunday I will be presenting three workshops at the Southeast Organic Beekeepers Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. I'm very excited to be invited. I am talking about

1. Preparing honey and wax for competition,
   
2. Harvesting honey from bee hive to jar, and
   
3. I'm doing a hands-on workshop making lip balm and lotion.
   

We'll be able to make lip balm in the time allotted for the workshop, but the lotion will just get started. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to cool after it is made before you can put it in the jars. I wanted the participants to get the sense of homemade lotion even though we won't finish ours in the workshop so last night I made hand cream (in the white round-top jars in photos below) and tonight I made lotion bars.

The lotion bars are just luscious. I ordered a mold in November when ordered a number of little things from Brushy Mountain. I've never made a lotion bar, and now that I've done it, I want to make them all the time.


These are made from a recipe I found online: 1/3 cocoa butter, 1/3 beeswax, 1/3 avocado oil and some drops of Vitamin E. Oh, my, what a treat. You pick up the bar and rub it between your hands and the most cocoa-delicious smell, the most soft and smooth feel on your skin, an overall nurturing experience in general occurs.

I made two batches and made the second batch with half cocoa butter/half shea butter in that 1/3 part of the recipe. It doesn't have such a strong cocoa smell and I think I like it better.

It's not cheap with those ingredients. Avocado oil was $9.99 for an 8 oz bottle. Cocoa butter was $4.99 for a one ounce stick. The beeswax was free from my bees. I think it costs about $2 a bar to make without buying wholesale ingredients, but I see lotion bars sold on the Internet for around $10 a bar for a slightly thicker bar than these....of course I am not including a cost for container. So maybe $10 is about a 100% markup over cost.

Here is the poured mold about 10 minutes after pouring.


Here are finished bars packaged in sandwich ziplocs.



Here is the last mold (each recipe I did made three bars - one ounce/one ounce/one ounce of ingredients).



And the beautiful (you should smell them) unwrapped bars with little bees on them. Oh, the limits of the Internet - I wish you could scratch and smell or slide your finger over the screen and sample.

Honeybee Hand Cream

I made a new batch of hand cream to give to people that I love with their Christmas gifts. I didn't have enough sweet almond oil but I did have red palm oil. I changed my formula to include less beeswax so that it wouldn't be so stiff and used the red palm oil since I didn't have any sweet almond oil.

Surprise! Surprise! The hand cream came out more like lotion and the red palm oil turned it bright yellow! I should package it in black and yellow striped containers. People seem to like it so far. I am waiting to hear from my nephew Clifford who is a fan of this lotion. I sent him a container of both the old formula and the new and hope to hear what he thinks.

Second Try at Making Homemade Hand Lotion

I followed the recipe in Kim Flottum's book, The Backyard Beekeeper. I used the ingredients and followed the directions. The picture in the book is this light-as-a-cloud lotion that is white. Mine came out green and hard as a candle. These results made me think of my mother.

My mother is a great cook. She understands how everything goes together and everything she makes is wonderful. Her banana bread is so delicious. Once I asked her for the recipe and she gave it to me on an index card. I went back home and tried it, but it didn't taste at all like my mother's banana bread. So the next time I went home, I asked my mother to make the banana bread and show me what she did.

Reading the recipe card and watching her make the bread were two quite different things! I grabbed another card and titled it: "What Mother Really Does." We now have a standing joke in my family: If you like a recipe, we always ask the cook, "OK, so, how did you 'mother' it?"

I believe that what the lotion maker in The Backyard Beekeeper actually did and what the recipe said were two quite different things.

Today I saw a friend who once upon a time made hand lotion from his herb garden. I asked him what the secret to success with lotion is? He told me to whip it up in the blender while it cools and it will be soft like commercial lotion.

I came home and popped the hard little candle-like lotion nuggets out of the containers in which I had poured them and put them in the Pyrex measuring cup. I placed the whole thing in a pan of hot water and re-melted the lotion. When it was liquid, I added a little lanolin (not in the recipe) and about a tablespoon of cocoa butter.

So here's the process of putting it all together:

Backyard Beekeeper recipe:
2 cups olive oil
1/4 cup palm oil (I couldn't find it at Whole Foods and used almond oil instead)
3/4 cup coconut oil
6 ounces beeswax
40 - 50 drops essential oil (I used lemon)

Melt the oils and butters. Add the beeswax and melt together. Test the mix by dropping five or six drops onto waxed paper to cool so you can see how hard it gets. If too hard, add more oil, if too soft or greasy, add more beeswax to stiffen. When it begins to cool, stir in six drops of Vitamin E oil. If you want fragrance, add essential oils after removing the pan from the heat.
THE END.

The above results in hard candle-like green bars (green because of the extra virgin olive oil).

What I really did (how I "mothered" the recipe (as we say in my family):

1. I heated the olive oil, almond oil, coconut oil in an 8 cup Pyrex measure sitting in a pan of boiling water.
2. When the liquids were hot, I added 6 ounces of beeswax and melted it in the hot oil.
3. I took this off of the heat and added six drops of Vitamin E and drops of lemon essential oil (it still smells like beeswax - probably not enough lemon - but I love the beeswax smell).
4. After this hardened and I wasn't happy with it, I remelted the whole thing,
5. I added 1 T of cocoa butter and 1 tsp. lanolin.
6. I cooled it until it was beginning to solidify.
7. I put the whole mix in the blender and ran it on "puree" for about 10 minutes.
8. I then let the mix cool for about an hour in the blender jar and turned the blender on to "puree" about every 10 minutes for about a minute's duration.
   
   What a mess this made! I gave my daughter who came to dinner a jar to take home with her. I am out of containers (ordered more from Majestic Mountain Sage last week) so I put the remaining lotion in a tupperware container. I believe this recipe would make about 1 dozen 2 oz jars. I filled eight jars and the 8 ounce Tupperware container.