I was so excited today to make candles from my own beeswax. I had to buy some bee supplies recently, so I added a cute candle mold of a bee skep to the order. I had a full shoebox of beeswax from when I went in and cleaned up the hive a bit and gathered some honey a few weeks ago. I had washed the wax in cold water to get rid of any excess honey in it and picked through it as best I could. Then I dried it on towels overnight. The shoebox was a good place to store it since it wasn’t airtight it allowed the little remaining water to evaporate.

In a double boiler over a low heat I put the beeswax into a 2-quart wax melting pot. It all wouldn’t fit, so I had to add more as the wax melted down.


Now even though I’d picked through the cleaned beeswax, there was still things that needed to be filtered out. I strained the melted wax twice through double layers of cheesecloth. Then I added a little lemon essential oil to add just a hint of scent. Beeswax already has a wonderful scent, but I thought lemon would enhance it rather than detract from it.

I’d prepared the mold while the wax was melting. I sprayed it with a silicone spray, threaded a wick that I’d dipped in beeswax through the center and centered it at the base using a bamboo skewer. I wanted to filter the wax one last time, so I placed a single layer of cheesecloth over the top of the wax melting pot and secured it with a rubber band before pouring it into the mold.

All that work — the gathering of the wax, washing the wax, cleaning the wax, drying it. Then today melting and filtering and everything else. I got a total of 4 candles. And because I only had one mold I had to go through the process four times! (Note to self: order more wax molds.) Now I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled to have them and so proud of my bees for their good work. But now I truly understand why beeswax is so expensive. Aren’t they beautiful?

Since I was only gone to Atlanta from 2:00 p.m. on Thursday afternoon until midnight Saturday night, the workers only had a few more hours on Thursday and Friday to make more progress, but progress they did make.

The small window has now been installed in-between the goat stall doors.


Inside the walls are up in both goat stalls and in the smaller one (where Cissy will have her kid this week), they’ve finished installing the plastic material that will make the walls washable and easy to keep clean.

Every day I find at least one egg laid in the new corner hayracks, and often find one laid right on the floor. Today I bought some birch-covered plywood to make some nesting boxes I can put in there and encourage them to lay in them instead.


Once again we have a pretty crappy weather forecast for this week. Hopefully we won’t have the steady rains we had the first three days of last week and we’ll see some siding and roofing go on outside. Even if there is rain there is finish work to be done inside on the walls, floor, window and door trim.

With Cissy due to kid this week, I’ve got another week of waiting and watching. Saturday will be day 150, but I’ve learned that Nigerian Dwarf’s most often kid between day 145 and 150, so I’m on high alert as of tomorrow for signs of labor.