Bees died over the winter of 2013 - 2014.

The 2013 - 2014 winter in Minnesota was a tough one for bees and certainly for my two hives; they both died.  In late December, we think that we saw evidence of cleansing flights, and I saw live bees in the hive when I looked through the top open hole.

But, come spring, both hives were dead.  When we opened each hive, we could see bees next to capped honey.  They died "head down" in the cell as if they were trying to get the last bit of honey out of the cell.  The mite counts were low going into the winter, and I saw no evidence of disease of infestation. So, it may be that the cold was just too much for the cluster of bees to move to new areas of honey.

In the spring/summer, we harvested the honey.  There wasn't a great deal of it, so we used the crush and strain method with a household stainless steel mesh strainer.  The harvest is below.

Honey from hives A and B (mixed) before final straining.

We also used a double-boiler to melt and purify the wax.  We now have about 2 pounds of pure beeswax.  (No picture currently available.)  There are still fine bits of wax in the honey.  We eat it this way.  But, before we give it to others, we have been using 4 layers of cheesecloth as a final straining.

Lip balm with beeswax.

Over the weekend of 5/18/13, we made a batch of citrus-coconut lip balm, and used up the small amount of beeswax that we had.  The beeswax came from Hive B's errant piece of wax that we found and some small bits of burr comb that we found in the two hives during inspection #2.

The recipe for the lip balm was pretty simple and included the following components.  I forget the exact amounts (if interested, post a comment, and I'll dig up the recipe):

• Beeswax
• Coconut oil
• Sunflower oil
• Drops of pure orange peel extract (or lime or lemon or etc.)
• Drops of vitamin E

After these were melted together in a double boiler, they then cooled in an old lip balm container that we cleaned out and sterilized.  I'm not a big user of lip balm, so I can't comment on how it turned out.  It seemed to moisten the lips fine.  It didn't have a lot of flavor or scent, so I might consider increasing the amount of orange peel extract and/or coconut oil in the future.