Soap making

Commercial soap and natural soap are two completely different products. They're both soap but that's about all that's the same.

I only discovered natural cold process soap a couple of years ago. Prior to that I had eczema on my hands and was using prescribed steroid creams. I didn't like using steroids but my doctor said nothing else could help. Then I discovered a recipe for natural soap with honey and as I started using it my eczema disappeared.

Adding honey to the soap makes it even better than just natural soap. Honey is a natural antiseptic and an emollient. Now my favourite soap is my own Natural Soap with Honey that I hand make in small batches. That's how I spent a couple of hours this morning.

The soap making process is fairly simple, but can be dangerous. Soap is produced by a chemical reaction between a lye solution with fats and oils. The lye solutions is a strong alkali and will burn if any gets on the skin - I wear an apron, gloves and safety goggles.

Look at the ingredients of a commercial soap and you will often see tallowate. This is soap made from tallow - animal fat. It's cheap and smells unpleasant. Cheap is what's important to commercial soap manufactures. They want to make a profit. Tallow doesn't make a good soap and needs to be deodorized and then an artificial perfume added. Some things added to soap are known to be carcinogenic; some are know to dry and damage skin. Soap manufacturers make soaps that sell, so they look good, they smell good, they're often heavily advertised - it doesn't actually make them very good.

The fats and oils I use both feel and smell good before I start the soap making process.  It's exactly the same as cooking - if you use quality raw ingredients you get a quality end product. Of course, the commercial manufacturer is more interested in profit so will use cheaper alternatives. Hide it and tell the customer there's something good about the product and it will sell.  I use relatively few ingredients in my soap. There is no need to add anything to alter the smell, texture or colour.

Rant over about ingredients. The process is different too. Natural soap is difficult to mill and roll. Commercial soap makers use a continuous process, raw ingredients poured in at one end and soap rolled out at the end. Natural soap would stick to the machinery and clog it. This is because when soap is made from lye and fats, glycerine is also produced. Glycerine is very moisturising and can be used by people with sensitive skins, but it makes the soap too sticky for the commercial process. To remove this problem, commercial soap manufactures remove the glycerine and sell it separately.  

The resulting soap is also easier to mould and takes artificial colour and perfume better. Genuine natural cold process soap doesn't colour well. The so-called hand made soaps that are brightly coloured and moulded are actually commercial soaps that have been hand coloured and moulded. It's called melt and pour soap. Some of the results look really lovely, but the soap they're made from is as commercially made as any in the supermarket.

So, back to what I was doing this morning. All I've really done is started the process. I now have two boxes wrapped in towels in which the process of soap making is taking place. The towels keep the heat in that's generated and make the process quicker. Tomorrow I'll unwrap them and cut them into bars. After time to cure they'll be wrapped and labelled.

After discovering just how good the soap is I wanted other people to try it. The regulations about selling soap are quite stringent, as they should be, and it was quite daunting going through to process to ensure my soap was legal to sell. Since I started selling it the feedback I've received tells me that other people feel the same about my soap as I do. The vast majority of sales are to people who have bought it before or who have had it recommended to them by friends and family. Only last week I was approached in a restaurant by someone who wanted to know if I was the person who sold the soap that got rid of the dry patched on her friend's skin. Could I bring some in for her next time I was there?

Soap. It's used everyday. How's yours been made? What's in it? Is it actually damaging your skin?

Soap available via www.BeeswaxHandmade.co.uk or www.etsy.com/shop/BeeswaxHandmade

Bee Diary - March 2013

Yesterday I went out into the snow to check my bees. In a normal March I would wait for a warm sunny day, don a full beesuit, light my smoker and check right inside.

 

 Right inside means just that. I'd take the hive apart and lift out individual frames of wax comb to see what's there. I'd expect the single queen in each hive would have been very busy and several frames would be full of eggs, lava and sealed cells where the lava metamorphosis into adult bees. These frames would be covered with adult bees, feeding the lava, leaning the hive, building the wax, returning with food or maybe just being there, keeping the brood nest warm. Seeing frames like this means all is well. The honey bee colony is building up as it should, so it can collect enough food to make honey, both to see it through the next winter and for me to collect.

 

Seeing frames like this means there is a good queen there. There is no need for me to see her, but I may be lucky. She's slightly larger, with longer legs and walks with more or a waddle than the other bees, all of them her daughters. She doesn't look a lot different from her daughters and doesn't like the light so often she hides. The first time I see her on a really good day, I pick her up and dob a little paint on her back so she's easier to find if ever I do need to. On a warm day in March, I do this quickly so as not to disturb them too much and as I put each hive back together I'd be looking forward to taking off the first honey crop of the year in April.

But back to this March. Normally I would never open up a hive in the snow. Normally there would be no need. This year is very different. Honey bees store enough food at the start of the winter to take them through to early spring when they can collect pollen and nectar from willow, snowdrop and other early spring flowers. With more food coming in, the queen is prompted to lay more eggs. This provides the worker bees the hive needs in the summer to collect the honey harvest. This year the winter has lasted so long, bees have run out of stored food and, not only is it too cold for them to fly, there is no flowers out for them to forage on. My quick peek inside yesterday was just to check they have some food. I've been feeding them for a few weeks now with a sugar fondant. All I was checking was that they still had some food and that they had found it. When it's really cold they cluster close together for warmth and would rather starve to death than walk a few inches to look for food.

Thankfully, all my hives had sufficient food. They should survive until better weather comes and they can fly again. But there was no sign in any of them that the queen was laying well. It takes six weeks for a bee to develop from egg to foraging. How will this delay affect the hive's ability to collect enough food in the summer? I will have no early honey crop this year. Will I have any at all?

After checking my bees and feeling grateful that they are still alive I checked my emails. There was an email from the government's National Bee Unit, Starvation Risk from Cold Weather - check your bees have food!

After last year's bad weather, honey bees are now in a worse position than they've been for a long time.

Find out more about beekeeping and way to help bees at www.bbka.org.uk

 

Or check this new blog for more on the plight of bees http://bees-make-honey.co.uk/blog/

This picture was taken in my garden a couple of days ago - before the heaviest snow!

 

One of the things I do is make candles, pure 100% beeswax candles. No other candle wax produces as good a candle as beeswax, but over the years I've discovered that not all beeswax candles are as good as they should be. People buying them are being conned.

Here are 5 things you should look for when buying beeswax candles

1. Is it really all pure beeswax?

Most candles are made using blended waxes and usually contain mostly paraffin wax. Beeswax, a natural and superior wax for candle making, is much more expensive. If you don't see beeswax mentioned on the label, you won't have beeswax in the candle. If it does say beeswax look a little more closely. I've seen candles labelled as '100% pure beeswax' only to find that the candle contains this, but only as 10% of the waxes in the candle - the rest were paraffin waxes!


2. Has the wick been primed?

Not always easy to tell from a photograph, but obvious if you can actually see the candle. Priming a wick isn't difficult, but it's an extra step in making a candle and so many candle makers don't bother. As a result, their candles don't light as easily, especially the first time. It still matters even if you never intend to burn your candle; unprimed wick frays. So how can you tell if the wick has been primed? A primed wick has been soaked in wax before being used to make the candle. A wick primed for beeswax will have the colour of beeswax. If the wick is white, it definitely hasn't been primed.

Don't forget that natural beeswax comes in a variety of shades; properly primed wick made be a different shade to the candle it's in!


3.Has it got the right wick?

Not easy to tell by looking, but you'll get the best burn from a beeswax candle if the wick used has been made for beeswax and not paraffin or other waxes. The braiding to make the wick is different.

The size of wick is also important; too large and the candle will burn too quickly; too small and the flame will be weak or molten wax will smoother the candle and stop it burning. Candle testing is the only way to be certain the wick is right.


4.Are the candles tested?

Testing a candle means burning it so obviously the candle you're thinking of buying won't have been tested, but the maker should have tested candles like it. Testing ensures the candle has the right wick, that it lights and re-lights easily and how long the candle burns for among other things. If the candle hasn't been tested, how do they know it's right and more importantly, how do you?


5. How has the candle been made?

Most candles are made in moulds, but not all. They produce very good candles with good burn times. Rolled candles burn quicker, because, no matter how tightly they're rolled, there is some air between the layers. The longest lasting candles are hand dipped. A skilled candle dipper can ensure there are no air bubbles at all in their candle. This is very labour intensive and rare these days - be prepared to pay more for a candle like this.