What Do Beekeepers Do in the Winter.....?

And your answer was make soap - right?

That's what I am going to do this weekend.  My sister and I are going to the John C Campbell Folk School to take a class in making lye soap.  I love spending time with my sister and I love going to classes at the Folk School, so what could be better?

I haven't taken a Folk School class in seven years, so this should be lots of fun.  It's like going to grown up camp, complete with a dining hall with community tables.  Back in 2006 when I first started beekeeping, I took a beekeeping class at John Campbell from Virginia Webb and learned about bees, pollen, and wax.

Jeff (my son-in-law who keeps bees with me) and I have already experimented with glycerin soap, but some people don't like that type of soap and the "real thing" is made with lye as they did in the old days.  So I am thrilled with the opportunity to learn an old-fashioned craft and maybe figure out how to put my beeswax into soap.

Jeff wants me to teach him so he can make his favorite soap and not have to buy it.  The soap he likes is flavored with DIRT, SMOKE, and bay rum.  I went on the Internet and would you believe, you can buy oils that are scented with earth, campfire smoke, and bay rum.  I guess he and I will try to replicate the soap he loves.

I'll take photos of what I learn and post them here when I get back.  It's pretty old-fashioned at the Folk School and I doubt I'll have Internet access for posting while I'm there.

I heard a lecture from Marcy, a member of our bee club, on how to make lye soap.  She said her jeans were now full of holes from the lye, so I am taking pants I could care less about and old shirts.  We'll see how it goes!

My first Folk School class was when Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics.  The Olympic committee asked the Atlanta citizens to get out of town to lessen the traffic problems during the games.  So I signed up for a quilting class for a week at the Folk School and thus began my grown-up camp fun and games.

More after my adventure.  BTW this is my 2015th post on Jan 15, 2015!

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):

A Bee By-Product

This is not going to be my year for honey. The honey I harvested for the movie on honey harvest that Gina and I made on Sunday was very thin. I was worried about how runny it was - it was all from fully capped frames - so I put a drop in my refractometer. I didn't like what I read on the refractometer so I tried another drop and another and another. All read the same: 20.2. Honey with a higher percentage of moisture than 18.6 is likely to ferment and is substandard honey (to quote Cindy Bee). So I am without a good crop since that was my only possible box to harvest.

Cindy and the people on the Beemaster forum suggested that I put it with the dehumidifier and maybe that would dry it out some. I am not optimistic although it has been on top of the dehumidifier all day.

Of course, maybe I'll learn to make mead and use this thin honey for a new project!

The gift the bees have given me this year is a lot of cucumbers. The cucumbers in my garden are all gorgeous and perfectly straight. None of those poorly pollinated crooked cucumbers are to be found in my garden with these great bees around.

So tonight for the second time this June, I made pickles.  I made a second recipe of sweet pickle relish because it's so great to have around when you want to make tuna salad.  I also made four pints of bread and butter pickles.

Even though I will probably go honey-less this year, I will thank my bees each time I eat tuna salad!

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.

Hands On Opportunity at the Short Course

The Short Course offered many opportunites for hands on experience in bee stuff. Philippe Audibert hosted a honey tasting table with honey samples from all over Georgia, North Carolina and even from other parts of the world. This was a popular display.


Jerry Wallace demonstrated products of the hive. His table included pollen to taste as well as jars of propolis and his award winning h0ney. He also had his wax blocks to show.


Jason Steidel demonstrated what one might do with a hammer and nail in building bee equipment. He had a very helpful handout for the participants.


PN Williams set up shop at his table and sold bee equipment as well as took orders for nucs to be delivered in the spring.

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.

Learning about Lip Balm

I made my first attempt at making lip balm today and it turned out OK - not great, but I learned a lot. Here's what I did:

1. I bought Coconut oil (organic and virgin) from the Internet
2. I bought 100 containers from the Internet and some from the Container store
3. I bought 1" circular mirrors from EBay
4. I followed the recipe in Kim Flottum's book: The Backyard Beekeeper.
5. I weighed and melted the wax
6. I put the glass jar of coconut oil into a boiling water bath to melt it
7. When both were melted and both were 150 degrees F, I stirred them together.

Now the problems start. The recipe said to take the mixture off of the heat and stir in the vanilla and honey. As soon as I took the mixture off of the heat, it started solidifying. I poured in the honey and vanilla but they never really mixed well despite my using a whisk.

So I put the glass measuring cup with the mixture in it on top of one of the boiling water baths with the burner turned off and the mixture came together much better. I filled the containers by using a syringe that the pharmacist at Target gave me. I put the container filled cookie sheet right beside the boiling water bath on top of which sat the balm mixture so that it wouldn't solidify before getting into the container.

Filling the containers wasn't easy - somewhat messy, but I succeeded in filling 90 small containers and five larger ones. As they cooled I realized that in about 20 of them, the honey/vanilla mixture was on the bottom of the lip balm and that those would not be usable because there was liquid below the balm mixture.

I don't know if I can wash and re-use these containers - I hope so - it's a lot of effort if I have to throw out 20 of them.

My camera lens had a smudge on it, but I made a slide show anyway to show you the pictures: