Candles and Butterfly's

Candles that I made from bees wax

I have been collecting the wax from my bee hives for a number of years and have been storing it away in old biscuit tins, used margin pots and empty ice cream cartons.

Over the years I've been planned to turn this excess and valuable wax into candles. I have even bought different moulds and wicks  from various bee keeping conferences and shows. However I had never used them. Until this week.

The candle burn't for about 12 hours

Briefly I started by melting some of the wax into a milk pan and then placing the liquid wax into a silicone mould into which I had placed the wick. I may give a more detailed guide in the future as I am still experimenting with different techniques.

I made 2 more over the for the next couple of days. Each candle was slightly different. The first was a nice and easy the second had a little pollen and honey in the mixture and the third using wax that was a little older.

So I had made 3 candles the first of which I have kept and the second I lit; it burnt for about 12 hours the pollen burnt and should be considered dangerous. The third I gave to my brother and his wife and they tested it. They found that after a couple of hours most of the candle wax had melted and the remaining candle would have continued burning. Similar experience to me.

I need to look into this, as it was a very enjoyable experience and would recommend it to other bee keepers with a surplus of wax. I have locate some of the other moulds that I have bought and will be trying them out too soon.

Down at the orchard all is well, however the pears that were still on tress have now disappeared. Some one, probably not birds has nabbed them, which is disappointed as even I didn't get a chance to try them. When I last looked at them I was tempted to pick them but thought I would wait a couple of days for them to ripen a little further. I should have picked them then and let them ripen at home.

Butterfly in the Orchard

Lots of butterfly's down at the orchard I have no idea the varieties and its something I should look into. I tried to capture them on film however it proved difficult trying to get into position to be able to get a good picture even with the zoom at max on the camera.

I still have some apples and the missing pears made me pick a couple and get them home. The grass still hasn't been cut.