ColdToes
Well-Known Member
After this last harvest over Labor Day I was left with 15 lbs. of a comb, cappings, propolis, some brood, pollen, a few dead bees, random bits of honey and of course varroa mites all mixed together in a bucket. With every intention of just throwing this sticky mess in the trash I put it in a corner and forgot about it. That is until a few weeks ago when I learned of whole hive mead, now as a beekeeper I am appalled that someone would kill a hive for drink, "killing the goose that lays the golden egg". This is when I remembered the bucket. It is basically a hive minus 60,000 bees why not feed it to yeasties.
So off I went this morning with very little mead experience under my belt. I figured add some water melt the wax skim off the wax put that aside, then I could weigh the bucket then subtract the wax skimmed off and get a rough idea of how much honey was really left in the must. So with 4 lbs of wax left 11 lbs in the kettle which is now a waxy mess, I heated to 160 and maintained for 15 mins. Cooled to 78 and took a reading of 1.180! Holy cow so added water to get it down to reasonable 1.130. Pitched pasteur champagne in a final volume of 3 gal.
So off I went this morning with very little mead experience under my belt. I figured add some water melt the wax skim off the wax put that aside, then I could weigh the bucket then subtract the wax skimmed off and get a rough idea of how much honey was really left in the must. So with 4 lbs of wax left 11 lbs in the kettle which is now a waxy mess, I heated to 160 and maintained for 15 mins. Cooled to 78 and took a reading of 1.180! Holy cow so added water to get it down to reasonable 1.130. Pitched pasteur champagne in a final volume of 3 gal.