From 20 hives, our own Nurture in Nature bees have been busy buzzzyy…
Our own honey is now available in our Farm-acy Stand and with the wax caps from the honey combs, came an exciting learning day of rendering the wax and the extra honey, that had been extracted by our beekeeper Joel.
Feeling like a hungry bear, I scooped up handfuls of the wax, dead bees and honey from the large tub into the slow cooker and like a bear, licking my paws was so good and irresistible! (I did wash them of course before continuing).
Good thing Mr Bear didn’t smell it from afar because the bees certainly did and tried to come join me to claim it back!
Once melted, I filtered it through cheese cloth so the wax dripped through into water, cooling immediately to form pure wax while the slum gum (unwanted material) was caught and the rest of the honey settled at the bottom of the water. Amazingly once the water was drained off as much as possible, 7 more jars of cooking honey were filled. Yay!
For our Friday workshop, we decided to use the wax to create wax food wraps and for those not familiar with them, we dip or paint some lovely cotton material, the melted wax which when hardens can be shaped around a pot, used to wrap lunch sandwiches in, and any other use that can be thought of. (Thank you Carin in your guidance in making these and provision of the cloth).
Though many pieces were made by many hands, making it easy work to process lots of wraps, we realised we did not mention that in coming to our workshop, our philosophy is that we are here as a community, learning and sharing together, so though one person may make many pieces, that does not entitle them to claim those pieces as their ‘own’. Rather they are learning by helping, giving something back but do get to keep an item they make.
This leaves all the other wraps to be sold in the Farm-acy Stand which brings funds back to the community garden, (and to those happy hardworking bees)….so lets please say a thank you to all our local bees out there for providing us with some wonderful products to enjoy!
Follow Nurture in Nature’s adventures at https://www.nurtureinnature.ca, or visit them at one of their forthcoming September events. For more details check out https://www.nurtureinnature.ca/upcoming-events
Traced Elements 