We’ve had unusually delicate climate for September and October in Calgary. The warmth gave us an opportunity to wash up some odd bits of beeswax – and switch them into geese.

I purchased this melter, constructed by Uncle Lee’s Bees in Calgary, a few years in the past. It shortly builds a excessive temperature. It’s simple to load and clear. Very mild to maneuver. Simple to retailer over winter. I discover it onerous to consider that it was designed, produced, and offered for only a few hundred {dollars}. (You should buy one from Employee and Hive in Calgary.) Alternatively, it could take a passion beekeeper just a few years of wax gross sales to earn the $335CAN ($260US) that it value. However that’s not the purpose. Producing nice-quality wax and doing it cleanly, effectively, utilizing the solar’s vitality – and never on the kitchen range! – is the true level. We discovered that this melter took the stress off the kitchen, saved bowls and cutlery from being destroyed, and saved on our electrical invoice.

It may be costly working an electrical or steam-powered wax melter – and admittedly, a waste of vitality and cash. After all, there may be some vitality enter within the manufacture and supply of this unit (glass, insulation, steel, plastics, supply vehicles) however there are equal prices in any melter. At most, I’d make a large guess that after labour and revenue to the producer and retailer, there is likely to be $40 in precise vitality bills constructing and delivering this photo voltaic wax melter. That’s a pair {dollars} a yr over the lifetime of this melter. All the opposite vitality wants are equipped by the solar.

This melter gained’t be for everybody. Nothing ever is. And if all of us liked the identical factor, we’d all be married to my grandmother, as my grandfather was. However in case you are in search of a method to flip cappings into geese, that is it.