Beeswax and Foundation

As a product of beekeeping beeswax is as much an important crop as honey. Beeswax has a number of uses, some obvious and some not so.Everyone knows that beeswax can be used to make candles and some will know that it is used to make the best furniture polish but did you know it is used in lipstick? Or to coat drug capsules, or to waterproof thread for needlework? Recently we have sold blocks of wax to didgeridoo players - they use it to waterproof the end they blow into apparently.We always have blocks of wax in stock.

Beekeepers collect beeswax during the season in a variety of ways; by scraping brace comb from the sides of the frames or hive, by collecting wax cappings cut off the honeycomb prior to extracting honey,by melting out solid honey in the comb such as that from

Oil Seed Rape and then seperating wax from honey. All wax collected needs to be filtered and cast into blocks.

The picture above shows some blocks of up to 5lbs weight.As well as the unusual uses we also trade beeswax with beekeepers who want to replace old comb with new beeswax foundation (see right) for bees to draw out to be new comb. We use Thorne's 'straight swap no cash'exchange rates which can be found HERE. We exchange the wax for Thorne's Premier quality Foundation.

We always have National sizes in stock, other sizes can be ordered. We stock Deep Wired, Shallow Wired, Shallow unwired and thin cut comb shallow. This latter type is used by beekeepers wanting to either make cut comb honey or by using it when their bees are collecting rape honey they can cut the comb straight out of the frames for melting.
Wired foundation is wired to give it strength (see photo below) when it is turned into comb by the bees. In this way the comb will withstand the stresses of being spun very fast in a honey extractor or lifted and manipulated when full of honey or brood.