Geese in a row | Unhealthy Beekeeping Weblog

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We’ve had unusually gentle climate for September and October in Calgary. The warmth gave us an opportunity to wash up some odd bits of beeswax – and switch them into geese.

I purchased this melter, constructed by Uncle Lee’s Bees in Calgary, a few years in the past. It rapidly builds a excessive temperature. It’s straightforward to load and clear. Very mild to maneuver. Simple to retailer over winter. I discover it onerous to consider that it was designed, produced, and bought for only a few hundred {dollars}. (You should purchase one from Employee and Hive in Calgary.) However, it might take a passion beekeeper a couple of years of wax gross sales to earn the $335CAN ($260US) that it price. However that’s not the purpose. Producing nice-quality wax and doing it cleanly, effectively, utilizing the solar’s vitality – and never on the kitchen range! – is the actual level. We discovered that this melter took the stress off the kitchen, stored bowls and cutlery from being destroyed, and saved on our electrical invoice.

It may be costly working an electrical or steam-powered wax melter – and admittedly, a waste of vitality and cash. In fact, there may be some vitality enter within the manufacture and supply of this unit (glass, insulation, steel, plastics, supply vans) however there are equal prices in any melter. At most, I might make a large guess that after labour and revenue to the producer and retailer, there could be $40 in precise vitality bills constructing and delivering this photo voltaic wax melter. That’s a pair {dollars} a yr over the lifetime of this melter. All the opposite vitality wants are equipped by the solar.

This melter gained’t be for everybody. Nothing ever is. And if all of us liked the identical factor, we’d all be married to my grandmother, as my grandfather was. However in case you are on the lookout for a strategy to flip cappings into geese, that is it.

About Ron Miksha

Ron Miksha is a bee ecologist working on the College of Calgary. He’s additionally a geophysicist and does a little bit of science writing and running a blog. Ron has labored as a radio broadcaster, a beekeeper, and Earth scientist. (Ask him about seismic waves.) He is primarily based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

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