All wrapped up Beekeeper Michele Vasar explains how to create your own eco-friendly food wraps, using beeswax
Beekeeper Michele Vasar shares her methods for making eco-friendly food wraps from the by-product of her beach-side hives
While honey has always been seen as the prize from keeping bees, the wax is just as important. It is the building block of any honeycomb, made from the waxy scales at the base of bees’ abdomens. In a hive, some worker bees produce the wax, while others mould and chew it into shape, and every honey-filled cell in a frame is covered with a wax cap. Beekeepers have to remove this wax covering before extracting the honey, after which you are left with a rather sticky frame that is still waxy. This goes back into the hive where the bees eat all honey remnants, leaving the frame clean but layered in wax. You then remove the frame again, and steam off and sieve the wax, which quickly solidifies into a block ready to use.
When you keep bees, you quickly build up a store of wax. Over ten years of keeping hives behind my house overlooking Chesil Beach, I have experimented with wax, using it in salves and polishes and for candle-making. Then two years ago, I came across some beeswax wraps and decided to make my own. It’s a pleasing process that produces something universally useful, environmentally friendly and long-lasting.
Beeswax has been used as a preservative for millennia, even forming part of the process of ancient Egyptian mummification, and cloths soaked in beeswax were used in Chinese medicine as far back as the second century. Almost two thousand years on, we’ve realised that the simple process of brushing fabric with wax produces an effective, natural way to keep food fresh without using plastics. The coated fabric is perfect for wrapping bread, cheese, vegetables and fruit, or for covering bowls in the larder or fridge. The only restriction is not to use them over fish or meat, and to keep them out of the freezer or microwave. Wraps can last for years, washed in cold or lukewarm water, and are ultimately recyclable.
Beekeeping associations can be found all over the country and if you don’t have your own bees they can advise you where to get local beeswax. Otherwise it is available to buy online. You can make wraps from pure beeswax, but they are more flexible and less likely to crack if you add a little jojoba oil and pine resin to the mix.