As well as delicious honey, another product of the hive is wax. When we remove the super frames to extract honey we check that most of the comb has been capped. This means that the bees are satisfied that the honey trapped inside has a low enough water content that it won’t ferment and will store until it is needed. Exploding jars of honey would be a disaster!

Before putting the frames into the extractor we have to gently remove these wax cappings so that the honey is free to run out.

After much washing and filtering this wax can be used for all sorts of things like candles or polish. Cappings wax is considered to be the highest quality and is a beautiful pale golden colour.