There’s a new pastime taking shape in our household. Making beeswax soap! It’s a work in progress. We’re still tweaking the recipe, aiming for a simple beekeeper’s soap that’s nice on the skin while appealing to the bees’ gentler side.
Propolis, beeswax and honey soap
Bees are exquisitely tuned in to scent. Human body odor and the breath of humans and other mammals can trigger aggressive behavior. The scent of old stings on bee clothes and gloves can also rile ‘em up. Lemongrass is a turn on, similar chemically to a scent produced by the queen. We started using lemongrass mist around the hive about a year ago instead of smoke and they seem to find it fascinating. It calms them. Hopefully, hands washed with lemongrass soap will be calming too.
Soapmaking is fun once you get past the fear of lye. There’s something alchemical about it, watching oils and wax go from solid to liquid and back again. Beeswax, in all its forms, evokes alchemy, I think. There’s the process of its making. Sunlight to flower to nectar to bee to honey to wax. Artists who use wax in their work understand how beeswax, in particular, changes things. It adds a singular depth and a warm, lively sheen to every surface it coats. Goldenness.
A lavender soap flower
As Marge McLellan says in Sister Bee, “It’s all just so… beautiful!”
There’s a nice little community of encaustic painters forming on twitter. I joined back in January, totally skeptical, and am now totally hooked. You can find me there @LauraLovesLux & if you’re a painter or a beekeeper or just plain interesting, I’d be delighted to follow you. I like using it as a search engine (smarter, wittier than Google). It’s part oracle, part entertainment broadcast. The term “micro-blogging” doesn’t do it justice. You’ve got to invest some time, a few hours spread over a week or two, before the magic unfolds.
Lisa Sisley-Blinn has done the encaustic world a kindness by compiling a list of artists who tweet. (Thank you, Lisa!) Her blog’s worth checking out too. As is Lorraine Glessner’s who also tweets.
P.S. Bee people to follow… @AFBR (Florida beekeeper, posts photos of bee removals) and @bug_girl (cool links plus entomological snark).
Honeybee foraging on white sweet clover in Boulder, Colorado.
It takes the nectar of two million flowers to make a pound of honey. Bees have to eat eight pounds of honey to produce a single pound of beeswax. So that’s 16 million flowers that go into each pound of beeswax.
Holy cow.
The photo above was taken in 2006, a gangbusters year for clover. Each tiny blossom counts as a separate flower.
One of the cool things about being a beekeeper is that people know you go for stuff like this.
Our friend Judy found this gorgeous wasps’ nest in the tree by her front door in Boulder last year. She was kind enough not to poison it and let it hang outside as hair-raising entertainment all summer long. (Brave woman!) We collected it after the wasps died naturally in the fall.
My first impulse, once we got it home, was to cut it open! (I’m terribly curious to see what it looks like inside. Aren’t you?) But the wavy patterns in the paper, and the inclusion of twigs and leaves into the body of the nest are so beautifully made, I’ve yet to bring myself to take it apart.
In the BBC costume drama Wives and Daughters there’s a scene where the romantic lead, a budding naturalist, brings a wasps’ nest home to his steadfast love interest Molly. It’s a powerful image, the empty paper nest. A gray vessel; round, rattling; full of phantom stings.
UPDATE 3/4/09
These are most likely bald faced hornets, not paper wasps. Have changed title accordingly.
There’s a neat article about honeybee propolis and HIV in Secrets of the City. For those unfamiliar… propolis (a.k.a. bee glue) is a sticky substance made of tree resin by honeybees to coat and protect the inside of the hive. It’s got potent anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties. It’s wonderful, lively, fragrant stuff.
My favorite quote from the article:
There’s this peculiar relationship that exists between bees and certain individuals. It’s primal and ancient. There are rock paintings of the interaction between humans and bees in Europe, Africa, and Asia from 8000 to 2000 B.C. That’s how far back this goes…
Beekeeping will never disappear for one simple reason: Some people are drawn to bees.
Snow! We got our first real dumping of the season here in Boulder, Colorado yesterday (a 7-incher) and it’s as fluffy as snow can be. One of the most interesting things about snowflakes is how they’re nearly always formed in the shape of a hexagon, not unlike the wax comb made by bees.
According to Michael Schneider, author of the spellbinding art/math book, “A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe,”
Hexagons contain a message that efficient structure, function and order are occurring… The appearance of crystalline snowflakes is why scientists consider water a mineral. As the temperature drops, H2O molecules vibrate more slowly, slow enough for electric charges within each molecule to attract other molecules and tighten into a hexagonal, close-packed arrangement. More molecules build upon the seed pattern to become beautiful snowflakes, blanketing the world with six-fold symmetry.
I love this book so much, I’ve included a link below. It’s a thought provoking compendium of geometry, art and philosophy.
Another book you might enjoy is “Snow Crystals” by W.A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys. It’s a picture book – hundreds of snow crystals – photographed in 1901 & ‘02. You can check out some of the images here. They are mesmerizing.
Don’t you just love road trips? I had the pleasure of tripping it up to Nebraska for a Sister Bee screening at the Chemical Free Beekeeping Conference right before Thanksgiving. Here are some images from the road.
I’m a nature girl so it’s usually grass and trees that ensnare me. But on this particular trip, trucks ruled. Their primary logos read like emblems from a distant kingdom. My favorites had a map or puzzle-like quality to them. But I enjoyed the simple ones too. And the cattle trucks were exquisite. From a distance they look like simple metal grids. But get close and you can see eyes, noses & hides peeking through.
Great food for painting.
Special thanks to Michael Bush of Bush Farms for hosting such a thought provoking show. I learned some interesting new/old things about beeswax & look forward to posting them soon.
Portugese artist, Susana Soares is doing some science-y work. She’s developed a glass breath chamber for diagnosing disease with honeybees. You can read more here.
Do you remember the heart shaped swarm I posted about earlier this summer? Its keeper, Mary Holt, was kind enough to send an update and it looks like the bees are safely ensconced in their new home in the English Cotswolds. Thought you’d enjoy these photos.
This first image of three freshly painted beehives is my favorite. I love the way the organic stuff on the right points to the hives on the left… and the way the building’s structure draws your eye toward the flowering bush in back. Lovingly managed chaos… the secret to every garden’s beauty.
(Click to enlarge.)
Mary says…. These are English W.B.C.’s, (invented at the turn of the last century by the Rev.William Broughton Carr) which form a double-skinned hive. The ‘National’ hive which you correctly located on Thorne’s website, will fit inside the WBC outer ‘lifts’. Unlike your crisp, dry-cold climate in the Colorado mountains, I live on a cold but damp exposed hillside, 750ft above sea-level, and felt the extra insulation of a double-skinned hive might help the bees come through winter safely.Â
On a rare warm day, Mr. Crabtree came and we transferred the bees with their brood frames from his National hive to my own. The operation went very smoothly and the bees remained extremely calm throughout.
Oh, man… this is gorgeous. Giant honeybees (apis dorsata) doing “the wave” in a spiral formation. The behavior is called “shimmering” and the bees use it to defend their colony against hornet attacks.
Here’s the article with links to more video. Thanks to my dear friend, Abby Wright, for the heads up.
More great news for the bee-interested in Boulder, Colorado! The Boulder County Beekeepers’ Association is again offering its annual beekeeping class starting this October 7th.
Topics include:
A Beginner’s Year
The History of Beekeeping in Colorado
Honey Bee Biology
Bees & Wasps of Colorado
Honey Bee Pests, Predators & Diseases
The Impact and Importance of Pollination
The Hardware of Beekeeping
Alternative Approaches to Beekeeping
The Beekeeper’s Year
I took this class in 2000 and it’s wonderful. Engrossing. Comprehensive. A great way to connect with the beekeeping community here in Boulder. Highly, highly recommended.
It’s times like this, when the human world feels unsteady, that I take comfort in the abundance made by honeybees. Here’s a picture of our garden from this morning. There’s a zucchini, some carrots and chard in the front with some just-ripening tomatoes, peppers and a few spent okra plants bringing up the rear.
And it’s honey season! Flowing. Flowering. We extracted our 2008 crop over Labor Day weekend with the help of family and friends. Maybe I’m being naive… But it’s hard to work up too much world-news anxiety at harvest time. As Marge McClellan said rightly in Sister Bee… “It’s all just so… BEAUTIFUL!”
Honey lovers in Colorado are invited to taste our honey at the Boulder Farmers’ Market on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings now through the end of September.
May your cupboards be blessed with abundance this fall.
William L. Coggshall and Roger A. Morse’s Beeswax: Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products is an excellent resource for artists who want to understand the science and process behind beeswax production in detail. It’s got comprehensive information about the physical properties of wax, harvesting, testing, bleaching and a thirteen page chapter on the uses of beeswax in art and industry.
Check out the two electron photomicrographs of beeswax scales on page 34. Gorgeous, eh? (The layers just slay me.)
there’s a scene where the romantic lead, a budding naturalist, brings a wasps’ nest home to his steadfast love interest Molly. It’s a powerful image, the empty paper nest. A gray vessel; round, rattling; full of phantom stings.
is an excellent resource for artists who want to understand the science and process behind beeswax production in detail. It’s got comprehensive information about the physical properties of wax, harvesting, testing, bleaching and a thirteen page chapter on the uses of beeswax in art and industry.
