Leave the cappings out for a day, let the bees clean the honey off & store it into their hive. Just put it away from the hives. Don’t overthink it. 🍯🐝 MikeTheBeeGuy 👨🚀
It's stainless steel not aluminum. I just got my first block out of mine and I'm lovin' it. Also I rinse my wax in a 5 gal bucket. The honey dissolves and the wax floats. Super easy and you get cleaner wax and less caramel on the tray.
Lyson at Betterbee has a huge stainless steel solar melter that can even hold several whole big brood or honey super frames at once and even sterilize your old wax moth or hive beetle ruined frames and clean absolutely all the bad wax and propolis off of them. It cost alot more than that little plastic one though.
If I could make a recommendation, it would be to not use two paper towels turned into 4 paper towels. Exactly the opposite in fact. Take your 2ply paper towel and tear the two layers apart. Use only 1ply of paper towel and put it over the small holes. It's more than adequate and you will lose 4x less wax that is absorbed into the paper towel. Also, put a 1/4 inch of water in the bottom of your drippings tray and it will self-separate some of that gunk for you.
Bees wax melts at around 145f, easily enough temperature to create 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) in the honey. This can make bees sick. This would not be good for refeeding. A small amount of it probably won't hurt them but I would try to avoid it.
First, rinse your cappings in enough warm water to stir with a hand. Strain that off and fill feeders to set out. The'll tear that up in short order. Great August feed. Then get on with melting.
YUP! Before you heat it, just rinse it and use that in a feeder. I use a t-shirt sewn into a bag ... stuff it and pitch it in 5 gallon bucket ... sit covered for a day with something to weigh it down. The next day, I just ring it out and stuff that into another t-shirt bag. Get another bucket of boiling water and pitch it in. Temp should drop below 150F in a few seconds. Then I use a PID controller (old sous vide wand) to keep it 150F for a 12 hours. Take the wax puck the next day and use a hand plane to take off the crude underneath ... about 5%. Super color and clean. Never had to re-melt the wax.
Looks good! I just got one from HillCo and it's pretty much identical. I typically re-render in my solar waxmelter. I find the honey seems to block up the paper towels so it goes quicker on the second melt because there is not as much stuff to filter and the wax runs right through. Solar wax melters are the way to go. Great video thanks for sharing!
