A generous gift for Kairos Community Bees
Kairos Community Bees would like to thank the family of Mike Elliott, a beekeeper connected to the Bromley branch of the Kent Beekeepers’ Association, for their recent generous donation of a Dana Api Melter, a specialised piece of beekeeping equipment. We are grateful that his family chose to assist our work with the hives in this way.
Here, Kairos beekeeper Grace Madden explains why this gift will make such a difference.
The Dana Api Melter is a super piece of beekeeping kit. I cannot stress enough how phenomenal this beast is. In layman’s terms, it can melt honey at one temperature, wax at another, sieve out any debris… all at the same time.
Why would we want to do this, I hear you ask? For several reasons, but mainly to clean old frames that may be full of honey and old wax yet also have a lot of debris.
Ordinarily we would spin it to retrieve the honey, then cut out the old wax frame by frame, then render it with our old faithful solar extractor. It was a painfully slow process: its efficiency was weather-dependent and it could take days or weeks.
This equipment can do the same in as little as three hours. Not only is it faster, but it can process larger quantities at the same time, with very little waste or loss.
This means we can reclaim time otherwise spent. There’s one experiment I’ve been wanting to try: putting a tiny dot of non-toxic, bug-friendly paint on the back of newly emerged bees and following their progress over their lifespan.
We can then answer questions such as: do they really go from being a cleaner, to baby feeder, to feeding and grooming the queen, to house bee, to guard bee and finally to forager and scout? Or are they built for a particular role from the start, their fate already determined by their diet as larvae so that when they emerge they already have the abilities needed for a specific job?
By marking newly emerged bees and tracking their daily habits, we may be able to determine this, to some degree.
We are so very grateful for this incredibly generous gift and the many opportunities it will afford us to learn more about our beautiful bees, first-hand. Thank you to the family of Mike Elliott. The Dana Api Melter will be very well used.