Sundry Products		"A-Z" INDEX &   SEARCH Petroleum Jelly, as applied to bee hives Commonly called Vaseline after the trade product so named.

Are your hives "well vaselined"?

One of the things that has to be done regularly on military vehicles is to vaseline the battery terminals (to inhibit corrosion). A friend of mine (Tony Mawson) took this a step further... He put about two cupfuls of vaseline on each terminal and smoothed it off into a conical shape. This did not contravene anything in 'Queens Regulations' and no amount of rough terrain would dislodge it and so the vehicle driver was confident that his battery terminals would always pass inspection.

The above is included in an attempt to show that, in some cases, by expending a little effort 'up front' we can often save a good deal of repeated work in the future.

Perhaps you have not tried vaselining the mating surfaces of bee hive parts... It stops the bees gluing everything up, it makes bee hive manipulations quicker and causes much less distress to the bees themselves.

It also helps when cleaning equipment as the vaselined surfaces are much easier to scrape. The extra effort and cost is more than re payed by the quicker and more pleasant handling that treatment with petroleum jelly affords.

You can make your own petroleum jelly (vaseline) from beeswax and FGMO (Food Grade Mineral Oil, otherwise known as liquid paraffin).

Petroleum jelly... Is compounded in various ways to suit different purposes. It is simply a mixture of beeswax and liquid paraffin, the proportions vary according to your requirements.

A thin version would be 10 gm Beeswax to 100 ml Liquid paraffin.

A stiffer version would be 30 gm Beeswax to 100 ml Liquid paraffin.

Warm both items SLOWLY in a double saucepan, water bath or porringer... When the beeswax is not quite fully melted stir thoroughly, but do not entrap any air, when there is no solid wax left, then pour into a suitable container and allow to cool.

The proportions can be adjusted over quite a large range... Try it for yourselves and then experiment with other ratios to see the effect. You can always add more oil or beeswax and re-melt to adjust the consistency if it is not to your liking.

To enable petroleum jelly to penetrate the surface of the woodwork that it is applied to, it should be thinned down with a volatile solvent, white spirit is a suitable solvent. Using a solvent allows a smaller amount of petroleum jelly to be applied, which makes the surface less slippery, but still stops propolis from adhering to the wood fibres.

Written... Summer 2000, Revised... Summer 2001, Upgraded... 12 October 2006,