didgeridoo mouthpiece alternative to beeswax

[gort]

Blimey you sound like that bird off the telly ad and the ' magic ' way they make those museli ? bars.

Dave

[Peter.H.M.Brooks]

The beeswax that I have is a fairly dark brown. I got it from a local shop that was used to people buying it for digeridoos. It took a while to put it on, too, dipping it to build up a thin layer at a time.

I'll look for a local (Cape Town) source, but that does sound like the stuff!

Thank you to everybody for all the really useful information in this thread!

[Mary Fisher]

Don't be silly, it's not vomit.

[Mary Fisher]

Andy, don't believe everything Tiranti says. They don't produce was, they buy it in and they believe the sales talk from their supplier.

Mary a Tiranti customer - but not for beeswax :-)

[Mary Fisher]

Then it was either not cleaned or it had been overheated.

Mary

[John Laird]

And this from the man who once (and please don't ask how stupid factoids like this stick in one's mind while I have never yet managed to correctly recall the shape and size of my wedding cake despite the grief this memory malfunction caused) professed a liking for Heinz Sandwich Spread. At least honey doesn't look like vomit.

[My apologies if this is completely incorrect, too. Did you have perhaps have a bad experience as a child that put you off honey? It's not what you might call an obviously offensive food in terms of appearance or flavour or smell.]

[Mary Fisher]

Some people say that honey is bee vomit because when nectar is collected it goes into a 'honey sac' inside the bee which some people call a 'honey stomach'. It's purely a container to hold the nectar until the bee gets back to the hive and regurgitates it into a cell in the comb. It doesn't come into contact with any digestive 'juices'.

A honey bee can collect about 1/2 of a teaspoon on one trip, she goes out again when she's deposited the nectar. Other bees then suck it up on what we call a tongue but is nothing like our tongues, spread it out into a film and water evaporates, leaving a stronger solution which is deposited into another cell. this is repeated until the water content is about 20%, when it's sealed into a cell by a wax capping. Nectar differs in its original water content but it's typically about 80%.

That's the only difference betweeen nectar produced by the flower and what we call honey.

Children like to joke about it being bee vomit but most adults are more grown up about it.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

By the way, an average pound jar of any honey contains about half a million pollen grains. I wonder if the OP reacts to that?

Mary

[AL]

That's not a good color for clean wax, it should be gold color or lighter. The gold wax would be comb, lighter color wax would be cappings (the finest wax). What you have sounds like the first melting of brood comb with no attempt to clean it - nasty.

To clean the wax you might try boiling it in water - 20% wax/80% water - then letting it set. The brown solids will drop out and the clean wax will eventually reform on top of the water. You may need to do this a couple times to get all the crud out. Oh, be sure to use a pan you won't ever need to use for any other purpose - you've been warned.

If you're dipping to build up layers you might want to try a cold water bath to dip the didge in between wax dips - it'll harden a lot faster and as the wax builds up it will still be pliable enough to shape as you need.

I tried wax on my didge but it kept sticking to my mustache so I removed it, the wax that is. My didge is bamboo with a wooden mouthpiece though so the wax really wasn't necessary.

[Huge]

No, you're quite correct. Love the stuff.

Actually, the source of honey bothers me not in the slightest, I just enjoy winding up the "it must be good because it's natural" types. I just don't like it, for no reason that I recall.

[unopened]

[SFX: Cheers, Applause, "Hear, hear"]

"Do, please have some of this scrumptious organic foxglove extract, enhanced by a merest soupcon of botulinum toxin and dusted artfully with sprinkling of ricin - all compleetely natural dahling, and tohdally orghanic."

Sid