Removing a colony of bees from Avoncroft Museum

Avoncroft Museum of buildings (http://www.avoncroft.org.uk) have a good relationship with my local beekeeping association, North East Worcestershire Beekeeping Association (http://www.bbka.org.uk/local/northeastworcestershire/).  We are called in from time to time to remove swarms from their buildings.  One building, the 'String of Horses', seems to have a fascination for bees, with swarms regularly landing there.

Processing Beeswax

Beekeepers often ignore the beeswax that they remove from the hives as they extract honey.  However it can easily be processed to give a product that can be used in a number of ways.  You can use it to make into a number of products such as hand cream, candles or furniture polish.  Even if you are not craft minded, it can be cast into small 1 ounce ‘ingots’ which are then bought by all sorts of people for their own craft needs.  Even if you cannot be bothered with these, you can simply take large blocks of wax to the equipment manufacturers and they will ‘swap’ it for wax foundation.

There are as many ways to process wax as there are beekeepers.  This is my way, which seems to be fairly simple.