Solar extractor with sterilised frames, old cappings and a beautiful cake of wax. Time to throw the cappings in the compost and replace the filter with a clean one.

In 2004 I built a solar wax extractor. The design was based on what I could find on the internet at the time, for example the ‘encyclopaedia Cushmanica‘ and good advice from beekeeping friends, both in Dublin and on the Irish beekeeping discussion group.  Here, eight years on, is what I have learned about building and using one.  Disclaimer: hot wax can burn, and wax is highly flammable.  DIY is not without risks.  Do all of this at your own risk!

Planning

Before you start, it is good to think about how you will use your solar wax extractor.  Will it stay in the same place year round or will it need to be moved to make space or stored away for winter?  How many hives do you have?  How often will you visit the extractor?  I have found that my extractor, which I keep in our back garden in Dublin, is sufficient for my needs, with 8 honeybee colonies. Over a good summer I’ve easily processed every frame I’ve found an excuse to put in it, plus my backlog, plus all the old combs of a friend.

If the spring/summer/autumn climate was warmer or sunnier, or if I did not go to work five days a week, I could process a lot more wax though this extractor.  If the extract was at an out-apiary and I only visited it when I saw my bees, throughput would be much less.

The solar wax extractor does two tasks for me:

• It renders used beeswax into handy cakes.  These I exchange for fresh foundation from Ben Harden, or I store for the day when I get into candlemaking.  The cakes of wax are not fully clean, as will be explained.
• It partially cleans cleans and (when the temperature gets properly hot) sterilises frames.

Moreover it is most satisfying that all the energy costs come from the sun!

Construction

Casement window - starting point for my solar extractor

To build this solar extractor I started with a double-glazed hardwood casement window in its frame, donated by a friend. The basic idea is:

• A double-skinned box, made of plywood with fibreglass insulation between the inner and outer box.  The inner box was built off the inside of the window frame.
• 

  Inside bit of extractor (alu tray and inner box) now in place. Outer box not yet added.

• The outer box is made of marine ply, and is built off the outside of the casement.  Fibregless and bubble foil insulation were put in the space between the two boxes.
  

  Outer box face down, showing insulation, awaiting back cover

• The inner box is shaped to hold an aluminium tray.  Along the bottom edge of the tray is a notch for the wax to drip out through.  Below the tray is a space where the the receptacle that catches the molten wax goes.
• In the aluminium tray goes a removable mesh tray (made from expanded metal), raised slightly up off the tray floor with short bolts.
  

  Inner mesh tray with old cocoons ready for the compost. Note t-shirt filter.

• Fixed around the inside of the the mesh tray is a cloth filter (usually an old t-shirt, cut in half up the sides and across the shoulders) in which I deposit the wax.
• The whole assembly is painted black to maximise absorption and is mounted on four legs, two of which have wheels.  The original white wheels shown in a picture further up proved unsuitable for the weight of the extractor on the terrain, so I used these larger black ones (from a gas barbecue that my brother-in-law had helpfully abandoned in our garden) instead.

Using the solar extractor

Here are a few notes & things that work well:

Washed cappings awaiting melting, in a new t-shirt filter.

1. It processes cappings (they tend to get a fresh t-shirt filter), brace & burr comb, super comb and brood comb.  I like to wash cappings first to remove most of the honey.
2. You will see an oven thermometer belonging to my brother’s ex-wife. That works well, but the extractor doesn’t really need one.  I’ve recorded temperatures up to 120C (therefore anything in or near the heating area needs to be heat-proof, and you need to keep children away on sunny days).
3. I chose the angle of the tray by looking up on the internet the correct angle for solar water heaters.
4. Almost all solid impurities are filtered out by the cloth filter – and the wax seems to flow down in 2 ways – down the front of the cloth to the bottom where it passes thru the cloth at the bottom, and straight thru the cloth & the mesh and then down the alu tray behind. Once the cloth filter gets dirty I replace it and use the old one (with most of the wax melted out of it) as a firelighter in the stove.  This works well for me.
5. I try to remove frames while they are still warm (but not too hot, ideally) because the residue sets solid when cold.  I use the knife to scrape the worst of any adhering cocoons or propolis off them, then they’re ready for more foundation.  Gloves are good because the residue can be a) hot & b) very sticky.  Manky brood frames then get cleaned sterilised in caustic soda & boiling water.
6. The cocoons that are left after melting old brood combs go onto the compost, once I’ve removed the wires.
7. Every autumn the extractor gets put away at the bottom of the garden with a plastic sheet over it.  When the extractor gets wheeled back up and put on the deck it’s a sign in our house that spring is here.  The extractor is scrubbed and cleaned with boiling water before use.
8. I made the inner tray wide and long enough to fit a queen excluder in, on the advice of my friend Joe Kelly.  However, I’m not too happy about the effects on the wooden joints of the metal expanding in the heat, so I tend not to use it for queen excluders.  Still, it’s useful to have a big extractor – useful for cleaning my travelling screen and so on.
9. I collect the wax in old pyrex dishes or pots with a few mm of water in.  The idea of the water is to dissolve the honey out of the wax, but the collection pot rarely seems to get hot enough for the wax to be liquid by the time it arrives down there.  Pyrex dishes are used instead of the bread tin that you see in the picture because they don’t rust.  I get the wax out by pouring hot water on the underneath of the dish, or by putting the dish in the freezer.  My pyrex dishes come from the charity shops or the bric a brac stand at my local church fair, not from our kitchen!
10. Having the door is hinged at the side seems to be right.  It may want a string or a prop to hold it open.
11. As you will see in the top picture, I keep an old knife in the collection area for prising stuff out and cleaning frames.
12. The extractor works on sunny days from about April to October.  I keep others’ wax separate because of disease & so I know whose pot of wax is whose.
13. With my solar extractor, the solid impurities are nearly all removed by the t-shirt filter but one ends up with residues of honey left in the wax. This means I need to process the wax a second time to wash out the impurities.

I should point out that many of the smarter ideas come from other beekeepers (thanks all).

The extractor has done its work - the wax has melted and run trough the filter, from the tray and into the pot below. Note the residue left on the t-shirt filter. Either side of the pot that received the wax are two more that I made earlier.

Improving this design

The above is by no means a perfect design for a solar extractor.  Here’s what I would do differently if I were to do it again:

1. Does it really need a double-skinned box?  I think so, but I’m not sure.  It probably keeps the temperature up on sunny/cloudy days.
2. 

   Alu tray with notch for wax to drip into receptacle below

   The lip at the bottom of the inner tray is horizontal. It would be better to have a slight gradient from the sides to the centre, by shaping the lip into a slight V.

3. I’d put the wheels on a proper axle.  Just mounting each wheel on a bolt is probably not strong enough.
4. I’d fit a handle for pulling it round the garden, or even fit it into an old wheelbarrow chassis.
5. I’d try to make a box that wasn’t as deep.  It’s very bulky (which means heavy) & it doesn’t need to be that big.
6. When it rains (it does that a lot round here), water can get in thru the window seals and into the inner box.  I added a lip on the window just above the top of the door and I built up the botton of the window with silicone sealant, which seems to have done the trick.  Perhaps a better design might be to get a double-glazed window pane, not in a frame, that is bigger than the box and lies on top of the box so there are no seals/joints at the front.  The rain getting in has meant that some of the marine ply has got rotten.  I wish I’d put extra effort into weatherproofing it, but perhaps it goes with the territory.
7. The fibreglass in the space between the inner & outer boxes is probably fairly superfluous – it doesn’t seem to get hot enough down there to really matter much.
8. Oh, and I’d move to live somewhere sunnier.
9. One problem with this design seems to be that the wax needs to be liquid to pass thru the t-shirt filter, and the top of the extractor seems to get a lot hotter than the bottom, so it can get discoloured by heat before it makes it into the tray.  One day I may experiment with leaving out the t-shirt and collecting wax with solid impurities in it, to see if that improves the overall colour of the wax.  I think if I made the bottom edge of the alu / mesh trays about 50-75mm higher up the box and made the inner box smaller, this might make it it warmer down below and possibly solve the problem.
10. I’ve been musing on the idea of a wall-mounted extractor.  It would swivel on gate hinges, and be angled much more to the vertical.  It would need to be smaller, but might be more suitable for a smaller garden.  Perhaos it would tuck away when not in use.

My next challenge is to get the honey residue out of the wax cakes, then someday I might make candles.  When I do that, I might use the solar extractor as a third stage to re-filter the wax thru gauze to take out the final few impurities.

Edit: Feedback received

In addition to comments below, I’ve had some feedback orally and by email.  Here are some of the points:

• At least one beekeeper in Ireland has had success with a single-skinned box and single-glazed glass. I’m coming round to the idea that a single skin is adequate.  It would be interesting to test the 2 extractors side-by-side
• Here is a different extractor design - a single-skinned bof with insulation inside.  Thanks David!
• One beekeeper mounted his solar extractor on an old swivel chair. It must have been a smaler & lighter extractor design than mine, but it sounds ideal for flat ground.
• Another beekeeper recommends using a lid of corotherm polycarbonate.  I’ve no idea what heat the polycarbonate will support, but he reports that his works well.
• There has been a good discussion based on this post, in the ‘Beekeeping worldwide’ group on Linkedin.  One contributor uses a metal barrel cut in half, and another suggested these plans for a solar wax extractor.

Above is my favourite cartoon of his, so far. It captures in a single image a point that I’ve taken thousands of words to make, less eloquently, over the last six years.

Today he publishes another fine insight – here.

DMI students participating in a word-of-mouth marketing workshop

Earlier this year I started delivering lectures to their students on my specialism of word-of-mouth / viral marketing, and it certainly has been a good discipline to deliver 3-hour lectures to inquisitive, demanding students.  So thanks very much to Anthony at the DMI for the opportunity to be part of this valuable institution.

Personally I’m convinced that the DMI has had a big impact on the quality of digital marketing going on in Ireland.  Learning like this will make the Irish economy more competitive.  Power to you.

Twenty years ago, businesses had more powerful kit (computers, cars…) than consumers did – not any more.

Five years ago adults had more powerful equipment (phones and laptops) than teenagers did – not any more.

What’s the next step?

(The style of this blog post is inspired by Seth Godin’s excellent blog.)

One of its wartime actions was to produce a Field Sabotage Manual.  This document has recently been declassified and can be viewed here.   I am indebted to Bruce Schneier’s excellent crypto-gram newsletter for bringing it to my attention.  The manual contains all sorts of useful instructions for sabotaging trains, generators and other equipment -but for me the best part of it is section eleven, which instructs the saboteur on ‘General interference with Organizations and production’ which runs from page 28 to 31.

Among the tips for causing chaos and making an organisation unworkable are many that will be familiar to customers of government departments everywhere, such as the recommendation to ‘Apply all regulations to the last letter’.

Section 11 in particular of the document is well worth reading. It is hard to believe that the author did not have a strong sense of humour, and it is sobering to think that way back in the forties, wise minds working for governments could see how damaging such practices are to an economy and to the morale of the population.

What you need:

• A piece of flat corrugated plastic, 66cm square with no holes, cut from an election poster (this size  fits national / commercial hives).  Ideally choose a poster with printing on one side only.  NB election posters vary in thickness – most are fine, but some may be too thick.
  

  Emergency roof ready for use

• four large cable ties
• A crown board or similar for a template
• Tools: a Stanley knife (box cutter), a felt pen, a hammer, pliers and a bradawl /skewer / small screwdriver.

Here’s how:

1. Decide which side will be outside.  I like to have the face of the poster on the inside.  NB if your poster has anything printed on the back, make this the outside (I found that the printing on the back of election posters can flake off).
2. Put the crown board in the centre of the square piece of election poster.  Using your crown board as a template, mark out a square area 1cm bigger than the crown board on each side.  There should now be a distance of 9cm on each side from the square you have marked to the edge (these areas will be the sides of your roof).
3. Using the crown board as a straight edge, make a fold in the poster along each side of the square that you have drawn.  Folding with the grain of the poster’s corrugations is easy, folding across the grain requires force and care. Bend the poster double at each fold, right to the edges.  Use the hammer to bash the folds flat so they stay put.  Don’t cut the plastic.
4. Next, using the same technique, make a diagonal fold from each corner of the square that you drew to the corner of the poster.  If your piece of poster is square and you drew your square in the centre, these folds will be at a 45 degree angle to everything else, which is what you want.
5. Bend the sides of your roof up at 90 degrees, and fold the 2 triangles in each corner over to one side, outside.  You may need to use the hammer again to make them lie flat.
   

   Newly-minted roof protecting my spare supers

6. In each corner, drill two small holes though the 2 triangles & the roof side with your bradawl, skewer or screwdriver.  Put the holes parallel with the diagonal fold for maximum strength and durability.  Push the cable tie through the holes so the ends are outside, and pull them very tight with the pliers.  Snip off the ends.

There – your roof is complete.  Total cost: four cable ties and a few minutes’ work.  Two things to remember with this roof: first, it’ll need a weight on it to keep it from blowing off.  Second, it won’t offer good ventilation, so consider adding ventilation by putting matches on 2 or 4 corners of the hive between the crown board and the top super.

This post appeared as an article in An Beachaire – the Irish Beekeeper in 2011.

As we left the house in Eimear’s car with an empty boot soon to be filled, I was feeling slightly tentative about the day ahead. This was not helped by Simon describing how before he got 200 stings in one inspection (luckily not all of them broke the skin). As we got closer to the apiary site the countryside that surrounded the road calmed my nerves. As we left the road and entered the forestry commission site all I could see was rough open land and didn’t know where the hives could be! The car pulled up in the middle of nowhere and we both got out and suited up, then Simon led me round to the bees. The first hive that we took the honey off had 2 full supers.

As I left the site with a wheelbarrow full of honey I was already exhausted and it was only lunchtime! The next site that we visited was called Bohilla and this was the site that had the angry bees in it. As we pulled into the drive of Nan’s house there was no sign of the bees. We suited up again and let out the remaining bees whom were trying to protect their honey. I struggled through wood behind Simon getting caught on the twigs as I went. As we arrived to the hives I could see 6 hives and a nuc box!

As we got into the robbery Simon suddenly remembered that we had to write up the inspection notes. This job was down to me and when you are gripping a pen with 2 pairs of gloves on it takes double the time! When we had finished we took all the honey back to the car all 9 boxes of it.

When we got back home we decided that it was time for lunch (as we had been working so hard), so we went to the Chippy up the road. After lunch we got to the messy bit EXTRACTING. This started with putting newspaper down to try to contain some mess, which later got screwed up and later made it even worse.

Halfway through the extraction process and the floor was Eimear’s nightmare, there was newspaper everywhere honey and cappings on the floor and the extractor was going wild dancing all over the floor, not to mention the burst frames! The only thing that released my mind from this mayhem was the beautifully capped frames of honey of which this was one.

At this point the smell of honey was pungent in the house and as my parents came to pick me up for the night they got blasted with the scent of Irish honey that they had never smelt before.

Day 2: As I arrived at an all too familiar sight, Simon slaving over a bucket of honey and trying to keep the mess down as much as possible. I was given my orders for the day BOTTLING, BOTTLING was not the word to describe it, it was more like slave labour. I had about 150 jars to fill and it wasn’t going to be easy, I started by doing the very painful task of putting the lids of the jars into the oven to sterilise them and to this day my hand has only just recovered from it.

I have to say that the good thing about bottling is that you have to make the jars look nice which means digesting about a pound of honey thought the process. This is why I think Eimear got a bit angry with me for taking her job and making her retire to the sofa in front of the T.V.

At three o’clock I was nearly done and we decided to cut it short and start constructing some frames this meant a lot of banging. After we finished the extracting we had to clean up the extractor. This would have been easy but there were swarms of bees around it wanting the honey that we were trying to clean. After we had battled through the bees we had to take the extractor back to a man called Seamus.  When we arrived at his house (without dropping the extractor out the back of the car) we had to get the extractor down the drive. This would have been easy in normal circumstances  but there was a car in the way. We had to go through the next door neighbours house which was being refurbished. As we got to the door we had to unlock it as Seamus wasn’t in. We got back in the car we thought that it was a bit strange that he wasn’t in.

In fact I heard later from Simon that he was in and that he didn’t hear us!

That was our honey harvest experience it was tiring, it was sticky but it was fun.

Tom Brown

Simon’s note: I’m very grateful to Tom for his help with the harvest and for his contribution to the blog.  Cheers, mate!

It’d be so much better if they just told the truth.

The same week I was to attend the Irish Beekeeping Summer School in Gormanston, Co. Meath – so what better than to combine two of my interests – beekeeping and marketing – and try my hand at making some movies for the Dublin Beekeepers’ website.  The results are here – with neophyes as interviewer and camera operator, anyone can see we have plenty to learn, and we could do with more sophisticated equipment than my wife’s compact camera!  Nevertheless, I hope these movies show the power of these simple tools, and, if you happen to have any interest in bees, pique your interest in the Gormanston Summer School.

1. How much nectar is in a teaspoon of honey?

• One teaspoon of honey is maybe 7ml in volume (depending on the spoon and its holder, of course)
• 7ml = about 10 grammes of honey (density of honey: 1.36 kg/litre according to one source)
• Honey is c. 20% water
• The bees collect nectar to make honey. Nectar varies enormously in its sugar content, but let’s say our spoonful comes from nectar that is 80% water, by weight.
• Therefore to make one spoonful (10 grammes) of honey you need 40 grammes of nectar.

2. How much nectar is made in a worker bee’s lifetime?

• A honeybee’s nectar load is estimated at 25-40mg per trip.  Let’s assume 32mg /trip .
• Worker bees begin foraging for nectar when they are a few weeks old.  Let’s say a worker bee lives 40 days and starts foraging at 23 days old.  That’s a maximum of 17 days foraging.
• We will assume that’s raining on a quarter of these days.  That gives her about 12 days foraging in her working life.
• A foraging bee will do about 10-15 trips each (dry) day.  Assume 13 trips/day.
• A 32mg nectar load x 13 foraging trips/day x 12 foraging days/life gives 4992 mg = about 5 grammes of nectar in a worker bee’s lifetime.

3. How many worker bee lifetimes does 40 grammes of nectar take?

• 40 grammes nectar = 8 lifetimes of a summer worker bee.
• Therefore one 7ml spoonful of this honey is the foraging life’s work of 8 worker honeybees.

However, as every beekeeper knows, beekeeping is a matter of opinion, and this calculation is no exception.  Spoons may be smaller or nectar may be more concentrated.  Bees may start foraging younger, may forage longer per day or may have fewer cold wet days.  They could carry more, or nectar sources may be closer to or further from the hive.  Moreover, an accountant would tell you that if the spoonful of honey was fully costed, then one would have to take into account many other factors such as the honey used as fuel in foraging & honey processing, and the overhead of the queen & the male bees (it would take weeks to build all that in!).  I’d say you could pick any multiple between say four and twelve lifetimes, and be quite justified.

So there you have it.  A spoonful of honey is the life’s work of eight honeybees.  However, as my friend Bill Kantor says, ‘your mileage may vary’.

A version of this post first appeared in An Beachaire – the Irish Beekeeper in 2009.