Gifts from the Bee Hive

 December 21, the winter soltice, the "shortest" day of the year, is two days away.  After this date, the days "lengthen" a few minutes every day until summer soltice, June 21.  Winter officially begins on December 21, but for me it is encouraging just to know the daylight hours are lengthening a little each day as we face January and February.
  It was 27 degrees fahrenheit today and my bees are all in their winter cluster.   I am restricted from checking my hives or doing anything with the bees at all, so what is a beekeeper to do in the winter. Well, many things actually; plan for spring, assemble new hive bodies, repair old equipment, make sugar bricks for emergency late winter feed, render wax.....
Speaking of wax, if you have some beeswax you rendered, you could make some gifts for Christmas which is six days away.  A small amount of  beeswax can go along way. I made some lip balm and lotion bars using 3 oz. each of beeswax, shea butter and coconut oil.   A very simple recipe, just equal parts of each. Heat them together in a double boiler, then simply fill your containers or molds.

Beeswax, shea butter and coconut oil.  A small kitchen scale is very helpful for accurate measurement. This recipe is equal amounts of each item depending on how much you want to make. 

Lip balm, lotion bars and bottled honey.  Easy and fun Christmas gifts.   I bought the lip balm tubes on amazon,  You can use any mold for the lotion bars, even a muffin tin will work great.