Bees are master builders.

As they move from flower to flower, they gather pollen to feed their young and nectar to make honey the colony's energy source.

But storing the pollen and nectar depends on building their honeycomb.

Built from beeswax, these perfectly engineered hexagons serve as both pantry and nursery, holding their food and future of the hive.

[music] My friend Jody is a beekeeper and sustainable farmer whose background in healthcare sparked a passion for natural wellness.

Today, she crafts candles, soaps and healing salves using ingredient sourced entirely from her farm.

With three distinct types of beehives on her property.

She's never short of one essential source.

Pure natural beeswax.

So this style hive i what we call top bar beekeeping.

The main difference is with this hive, you'll see when we go in, we add a bar at a time to give these bees more space when they need it.

Another really beautiful thing about this you'll see when we get in, they draw the whole frame is all natural comb.

So unlike in a Langstroth hive where we give them that she'd a foundation to start with, this is all naturally drawn comb.

It also has some disadvantages and it can be more fragile.

So we cannot tip those frames at all towards the ground or that comb or just break off and fall.

So you have to be very careful and very conscious of how you're manipulatin the comb in this type of hive.

Shall we open it?

Sure.

We start here at the back and like I said, thi is what we call a follower board And just like in the Langstroth when you pop that propolis seal, they all come and look.

So we're just gently So I don't know if you can see down in here, but these bees are hanging on each other.

This is called pest tooting, and this is what they do when they are drawing comb.

You can see the festooning here.

This piece might fall off.

So I'm not going to take it too far out.

But you can see wher they're hanging on each other.

And they've built this comb about halfway down.

We'll see a fully drawn comb here in a moment.

Produced by middle age worker bees who secrete tiny wax scales from special glands on their abdomens.

These wax scales are carefully molded and assembled by bees to form a structure we know as the honeycomb.

We can see here their freshly built honeycomb is light and color almost translucent.

But over time, it is used t store pollen, nectar and brood.

It darkens due to repeated use.

And so the bees wax that we are going to talk about later is this?

Is all of this is.

All of this comb.

Yep.

So you can point out wher the lighter wax capping is here.

So this is the capped honey.

And I see a lot of necta in here that I have yet to cap.

Yeah, the shiny part is the nectar that they're still curing to turn into honey, so that capping wax over the honey, once it's ripened, is really the best, most cleanest wax in a colony.

But when we extract honey, we uncap these cappings off of an entirely capped frame of honey.

And that's where we get the bulk of the wax that we can use from the colony.

I helped Jody put her hives back together.

And then we walk to her workshop to see how she uses beeswax in her products.

So there's lots of variation in the wax that we could get from a hive.

I prefer the newer, cleaner wax for making my products.

Bees wa is great as a thickening agent.

It hardens the bars of soap.

It is a humectant, so it draws moisture in.

So it's great for skincare products and lip balms.

And then you can also make beautiful candles and all different color variations from the beeswax as well.

The primary chemical compounds of beeswax are called esters.

Esters give beeswax.

It's smooth texture, scen and natural protective ability and enables it to stay solid at room temperature or melt when warmed.

This i a sample of purchased beeswax.

and I want you to smell the difference here.

And then true beeswax.

There's a there's a difference.

Yeah.

This smells so more flavorful.

I don't know what word to use.

This still has some of the floral component.

of the honey.

Yes.

Floral?

Yup.

Um, and it has the esters an things that beeswax is made of.

But in store bought beeswax, it's ultra processed they'll get it nice and clean like this for you.

And then they extrude it in these little machines to make these little pellets.

But there's no honey or floral essences left in that, so it's ultra processed.

So would this have the medicinal herbal?

No, I've lost all of tha using this product for making.

So pure bees wax.

So, know your beekeeper.

So pure beeswax is the way to go to get the medicinal Rendering the cappings from a beehive is a simple process that uses slow heat, water and cheesecloth, The slow heat melts the cappings leaving any impurities behind on the cheesecloth.

What's left after cooling down is pure beeswax.

So they you have nice clean wax that you can put in the molds or make products from or candles from.

And that's the beauty of pure beeswax.

It's eco friendly.

No additives, no weird chemicals.

Just something that bees made from scratch and we get to use it in all kinds of amazing ways.

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