Honey Extraction at Edcc

I attended the honey extraction event that Edmonds Community College was sponsoring on February 16^th, 2018. I volunteered for two hours from 12:30-2:30pm and Mary Whitfield (mary.whitfield@email.edcc.edu)  could verify this. It was an event held by the bee club and the main goal was to extract honey from the combs we have from our bees. However, we also helped filter wax out so it could be used for things like candles and soaps later. My task was primarily assisting with the wax filtration. I worked with a couple of other students to melt down wax and filter it through a cloth and filter paper.

Figure 1. A student removing wax from the combs using the comb. The hot iron is also visible in the image.

Figure 2. The inside of the honey extractor, with each prepared comb placed carefully inside. Heat lamps are being used to help the honey come off of the comb.

One of the first steps in the honey extraction was to try and separate the wax from the honey. In Figure 1, one technique  can be seen. We had two students, one using a comb and one using a hot iron, removing the top layer of wax from the comb and exposing the honey below. The hot iron is also visible in Figure 1 and got to be very messy once we started using it. There were about eight of the combs that had to be prepared before going into the extractor (visible in Figure 2). The extractor uses centripetal force to extract the honey from the combs and must be hand cranked. The portion of the meeting that I took most part in was the wax filtration. Mary gave us big slabs of hardened wax from a previous extraction which we broke into smaller chunks and began melting on a hot plate, visible in Figure 3. The wax had to be stirred slowly the entire time to prevent it from burning. Once it was all melted we used a strainer, filter paper, and a cloth to filter out all of the dirt and impurities in the wax (seen in Figure 4).

Figure 3. The wax, broken apart and being melted in a pot on a hot plate.

Figure 4. The melted honey being poured through a towel with filter paper and a strainer below it.

Honeybees are incredibly important pollinators and they provide a sweetener and wax that we use commercially in many products. Unfortunately, bees are dying off at pretty dramatic rates due to the pesticides that we spray on our plants. While we treat certain plants with pesticides more than others, it’s possible to view the removal of individuals in honeybee populations as an example of genetic drift, since some bees end up randomly pollinating pesticide covered plants and others don’t. This removal of alleles from the gene pool and overall decrease in population size has left honeybee populations more vulnerable to changing environmental conditions and predation. The rapid loss of honeybee populations has major consequences in the biodiversity of plants, food availability, and in our economy.  Flowers rely on pollinators to help with fertilization, and many of the plants that bees pollinate are hugely important in our diets, like apples, peaches, kiwi and more. Not only is this a human-wide issue, but it would also influence people in our bioregion since apple farming is very popular in Washington state and is a major source of trade.  The pesticides that are killing many of the honeybee populations have even been found in the wax of contaminated colonies, especially in colonies used for agricultural purposes (Lawrence et al. 2016). So, it’s possible that the pesticides we use are being carried into the candles and cosmetic goods that are often made with bee products. All of the intermingled ties between different parts of our society really highlight the influence we see from biology in fields outside of STEM. The more I thought about the influence pesticides have on bees, the more questions I had:

1)      Are the bees on campus exposed to pesticides?

2)      How can the agricultural industry minimize pesticide use while still protecting crops?

3)      Would it be possible to train other insects to pollinate economically valuable plants, instead of relying solely on bees?

4)      Can pesticide residue in soaps and candles cause adverse effects on humans?

I really enjoyed being able to bring my knowledge to the table with people who are less science focused but still know a lot about bees. Much of what I learn in my science classes can seem hard to apply in my day to day life. When I interact with people who aren’t in STEM I sometimes feel like I can’t relate to them. However, this gap between STEM and non STEM majors is a big part of why we have the issues that we have today. I discovered that we could all contribute something and reach our goal. I now understand  that I can use my knowledge of science to help with a lot of the problems that we face today. I feel that after this project I have a better understanding of the role I can play in my community. I’ve spent so much time trying to learn this material so that I can contribute to society and explain the science behind our problems to people who don’t have science backgrounds. This experience was a good reminder of why I got into STEM in the first place.

References:
Lawrence TJ, Culbert EM, Felsot AS, Hebert VR, Sheppard WS. Survey and risk assessment of apis mellifera (hymenoptera: Apidae) exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides in urban, rural, and agricultural settings. J Econ Entomol 2016 04;109(2):520-8.