Old Swamp Apiary

With the last of the 2017 honey harvest now sold and only a few stray jars tucked away for holiday gifts, we’ve been turning our attention to the more mundane activities of the off session–winterizing hives, routine maintenance, and ordering supplies for next year. Despite the terrible early bloom/late freeze combination that wreaked some serious havoc here in SC last spring (and decimated most of the state’s blueberry crop), the bees brought in enough nectar to give us a very respectable harvest.

We also ended up with about seven pounds of lovely beeswax, which we had great fun melting, boiling, filtering, and repeating until we had a satisfyingly hefty chunk that looked quite like a massive wheel of cheese. Said wheel then sat in a corner for several months as we tried to figure out what to do with it.

Until this weekend. We finally bought some silicone candle molds and a few other basic supplies and spent most of the weekend having fun. I think it’s probably one of the most satisfying activities I’ve done in a long time–perhaps at least partly because of how quickly it yields such pretty results.

The photo above shows most of what we made. The snowflakes are apparently supposed to float, so fingers crossed that they behave as advertised. 🙂