Honey Contest at GBA

I decided to be brave and enter my honey in the honey contest on the state level at the Georgia Beekeeper's Association annual fall meeting. I learned from my Metro entries and had polished, polished, polished my jars.

I was so excited at the end of the contest to find that I had won:

First place blue ribbon for light honey
First place blue ribbon for chunk honey (comb in a jar of liquid honey)
First place blue ribbon for cut comb honey (square of comb in a box)
Second place red ribbon for my wax block

There were cash prizes so I also won a total of $110!

I also entered my amber honey which didn't place and I forgot to pick up the jars and left them in Rabun County. Even though it didn't win, it was delicious honey, so I hope someone enjoys it!

The wax block wasn't the one I poured 19 times. After the Metro contest, it had some knicks in it and needed to be re-poured. So I re-poured it several times. The last re-pour before I was scheduled to leave for Rabun County cracked as it cooled.

I took all of my wax stuff with me to my mountain house and actually poured the block again on Thursday night before it was due at 9 AM on Friday! The last pour (that won second) wasn't perfect. It had stuck some to the bottom of the mold so the top was marred.

While at GBA, I went to a talk by Robert Brewer, the judge of the honey show and the certified Welsh Honey judge who teaches honey judging at Young Harris (and co-founded the Young Harris Institute). He discussed the wax block and I learned (in addition to what I had learned from Keith Fielder) that the edges of the wax block at the top of the pour need to be smooth. Robert suggested taking your thumb and rubbing the edge to smooth it out. Mine had edges that needed this. He also talked about how important it is to use well filtered wax - perhaps pouring it through silk. I'll be interested to try silk as a filter next year.

The other thing I was surprised by is that Virginia Webb, a beekeeper extraordinaire, won first place for the wax block. Her block was poured into a mold with raised designs. It was a solid block but had raised designs all over it. I had no idea and thought you had to have a solid, smooth block which is what I have been trying for - so here's something for me to learn more about for the future. I took a class from Virginia at the Folk School three years ago and learned so much from her.

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.