From: "Lucinda Sewell" <lucindajohn@sewellhome.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:34:47 -0000
To: <BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Small scale foundation making.

Hiya all 'treehuggers'
(Actually got called that today by a dour farm worker...he didn't know what
a dryad was either...)

Gene Nothaker wrote:
>either melt or re-work it into 4.9.

Dee Lusby wrote:
>In fact, I hear a very good
> beekeeper in UK knows the practice very well, and makes excellent foundation
> with some fiberglass press plates he has, thus recycling foundation
sheets.
>
> Maybe we could get him to explain here the methodology!
>
> Regards
>
> Dee

(On the clean wax thread)

Oh! Dee, put me in touch with him please...I could use someone in my
kitchen that has a clue about this stuff!

I don't know about good beekeeping, this year we'll see if I have learnt
anything at all from the masters of the craft who have kindly answered my
questioning, corrected my misunderstandings and from the fellow beeginners
who have encouraged me when the path has seemed uphill and stoney.

But foundation I can make. It is thin, a little brittle and it is pressed
from Dee's Fibreglass plates. Following the simple measuring technique of
measuring ten adjacent cells across the vertical walls and dividing by ten I
get a cellsize of 4.9.

I'm sure Dee will correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me cellsize does
not cure foulbrood. 4.9 does not beat varroa and TM. Healthy
strong bees resist pests and disease. (I have said before that all the
'alternative' varroa treatments have one common denominator for success...a
good beekeeper) The bees we have are the result of a
century of selection for big bodied long tongued (pity that didn't work)
extra load carrying types. THE FIRST TOOL USED BY THE STRAIN ENGINEERS
(BREEDERS) OF THE PAST WAS THE SIZE OF FOUNDATION. I wonder how many of
those bee colonies that 'just never took off' were being selected against on
the wrong comb size from the day they
were a swarm.

Dat's 'nuff filosofy - back to foundation...and DIY, apprentice good
beekeeper style!

Gene, I tried several ways to remove the impressions off bought foundation
prior to mangling it between plates. The method that works is to float the
foundation in a pan of water and play a heat source over the upper surface.
I used a small 'Gaz' torch, as used by plumbers and our local Bee Disease
Inspectors. Also makes lighting the smoker a pleasure. I think a paint
stripping heat gun would work well too. You can actually melt portions of
the foundation as long as they are contained within a border of solid wax. I
only did about 4 sheets, it's very time consuming and irritating. They're
all melted and reprocessed now.

I tried several other methods of getting a thin uniform thin sheet of plain
wax. None worked well enough. I also tried simply pouring molten (cool as it could be)
wax onto plastic covering the oiled (Olive oil) plates and mangling almost
immediately. Nearly worked, perhaps if the plates were warmed it would work
well. Messy, but at least the wax is reusable. Beeswax is phenomenal, it
'gels' nearly immediately, I think it loses it's heat very easily.

That wax I accumulated over 2 seasons...partly wild comb, and some
inherited combs I was too nervous to use (paranoid rumormongers got my wind up about AFB,- how did y'all let them call it American FB?) I didn't have enough
supers so I pressed out some honey from a 'cog' (a super full of wild comb).
There were a few supers worth of uncappings too. A total of about 8lbs.
I collected rainwater in downpours here, hoping it's clean. I don't drink
it. My first move was to wash the wax. I dumped it into large buckets, added water stirred and decanted through muslin. A few times. Then I tied the wax in muslin with
some flinty stones inside to keep it underwater and put in a pan on the
stove. After a while you learn to cover the entire stove in aluminium foil,
and the whole kitchen in pretty thick newspaper ...

As the water heats up the wax melts, floats to the surface through the
muslin filter (aided by a few stirs and prods from a stick) and voila! You
have clean molten wax floating on your pan. Leave to cool if you can. Or
like me put in a bath of cold water. If it doesn't want to remove easily
then beat it out underwater. You know it floats...I have an old stainless
steel pressure cooker I used for this wax rendering. Recently I rescued a
stainless steel milking bucket which had an altercation with a tractor, it's
bigger, and the sides slope nicely. Not evenly since the tractor episode,
but nicely. I am under the assumption (which means I forgot where I read/heard) that aluminium darkens wax. I'd appreciate input there, I may be confused with honey.

That rendering is repeated with cheap (if Cyndi doesn't catch me) nylon
stockings instead of muslin as a filter. My point being that the water does some work too. On this stage the water is dark after cooling, so something comes out, I suspect pollen. There's not usually (he says having done this 3 times :-) ) much left in the stocking. I put a plate on the base of the pan, otherwise the nylon melts through. (4
times...forgot that one!) Next time I'll carefully ladle the molten wax off
the surface into cookie pans, to get small cakes. Whatevers left on
the surface will be thin and easily broken up. Many small pieces seem to
melt (and cool) faster than a large block. And it all costs money.

I tried a lot of ways of making thin flat sheets without 'dipping'. None
were successful. I could make sheets alright, but they weighed about a third
of a pound each! Eventually I modified the proven system to fit my
quantities. Make a flat board a little wider than your foundations short
side and about 1/2 again longer than the length - see later. I
used 3/8" exterior 3ply. It seems fine...I soaked it overnight in very salty
water before using. I sanded it all perfectly too. Obviously wouldn't stand
up to commercial quantity, but has worked (and will some more soon) for me.

I made a custom melting pan to hold as little wax as possible. The material
I used was the top of a washing machine (some wierd blue anodising on a bright steelplate...obviously rustproof, and it didn't melt off) By the time I realised how good that 'waiting to be a hive roof' was I was ready to make it out of anything I could find. Now I did consider Archimedes in the bath, and made my 'dipping envelope' to wrap around my board, leaving enough space for a few wobbles, and deep enough that the wax wouldn't overflow, making me shout more typical Greek than "Eureka!"

That's why the board was so long...

Let's see if I can put this plainly: The pot to melt the wax is made to
encase your dipping board, leaving enough space for wobbles, and for the wax
to be displaced by the board without overflowing.

I sealed the joins of my envelope with an epoxy radiator repair. Says not
for continuous temperatures over 100 deg C, but hey, what's continuous, and
whaddya mean over? Water boils at 100...it worked. I sealed before riveting
the sides of my envelope. Another messy technique, but it worked too. This
envelope sits in a pan of hot water on my stove. I adjust the heat until the
wax in the envelope is fully molten yet not any hotter than need be. The
deeper the water the better.

Then I take my board from it's solution, give it a shake to remove water
drops and dip it in the wax. Two dips was too thick, so I settled on one slow one.
I got it wrong 3 or 4 times, until I got in the groove with my own temperatures, my own speed and my wax. I just dipped it, cooled it in the saline solution, trimed off the sides and peeled off 2 sheets per dip. Thanks to Dee and Barry, and a few Dadants in the past as well :-).

I will fill you in on my embossing tomorrow...its after midnight, yesterday
started at 6am, and today must too. Made 50 frames with dowel (round)
sidebars today. (and a bit more too) www.rupertshoney.co.za if you're interested.

Do beekeepers in the North always want a little more March? (I'm ready for
my existing colonies...it's the others I'm inviting I need more preparation
for!) Probably a sign of an inbeetweener...

Goodnight all.
Hug a dryad for me ;-)
John Sewell
SE England
L Plates...