Propolis Tincture - Acetone VS Alcohol? - beekeeping 
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ค. 2024
- Inspired by a viewers comment, Rich did some research and experiments on using acetone to increase production of propolis tincture for use on wooden ware. 
To see the earlier video about making propolis tincture, click here:
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Near Englewood and had bees for a year that moved out in Feb. Been trying to catch a bucket swarm since Feb. with slum gum and beeswax and lemongrass oil and propolis tincture. I have loads of bees on pollen plants around my yard, but none seem interested in the lovely bee safe homes I have provided.
Never heard of Englewood before, looked it up, so a little north of Sanibel. If your area lost its managed hives in the hurricane, you may just not have any swarms that have to travel very far to find condemned buildings they can move into, whereas they may have to travel to find nectar and pollen for the same reasons. Ask friends on the mainland if you can hang traps in their trees. Keep in mind that bloom cycles in areas where a hurricane has gone through can be disrupted for at least three years.
There are different concentrations of both acetone and alcohol. You have some good acetone, vs drug store nail polish remover which has all sorts of additives and crap in it. I'm surprised to see it used in this way, too - I always thought it had to be 91% alcohol. Great info
Yea, that is why I thought polish remover was not as toxic, the stuff my wife uses is actually a gel. I never thought it had that much Acetone in it. Then again, women have been applying poisons in the name of beauty for over 3,000 years so nothing surprises me.
I was talking about using acetone and not fingernail polish remover for dissolving propolis or other organic oils
Understood. Just don't try borrowing your wife's fingernail polish to clean the propolis off of your hive tool. I won't take the blame for that one.😂
@@bobbyperkins9188 understood. I've used acetone as a solvent and think of it as toxic, so this use surprised me. Most nail polish removers are acetone (some are a lower percentage than others) and there are also non-acetone polish removers.
Acetone is a good organic solvent and is the active ingredient in fingernail polish remover. Many times you can remove glue residues with it that isopropyl alcohol won’t touch
Yea, but sometimes it removes paint finishes while removing glue residues which are safe to remove with alcohol. Ask me how I know.
Sounds like you’ve been there and done that
Yep, and I've got the scars and nervous tics to prove it. And had to repaint part of the camper.
When collecting propolis from woodenware, such as frames, it is usually obvious where the wax ends and the propolis starts, but not always. When making your tinctures, would you recommend to err on the side of not getting any wax in the mix, or throw caution to tthe wind and not worry about getting some wax in there?
When doing it with alcohol, I would definitely throw caution to the wind. Wax does not seem to be particularly soluble in alcohol. I haven't tried to see how soluble wax is in acetone, because I would mostly use propolis in acetone for painting hives and frames and I don't see a downside to having some wax in the mix. Actually, I should do an experiment and see how soluble wax is, it might make for another hive application. Stay tuned.
@@southflbeekeepingwithrichthis kinda leads into a comment I was going to make. After reading "The Hive and The Honey Bee" original 1853 edition my L.L. Langstroth, he mentions he used his own synthetic propolis/glue he made from Rosin (likely Pine rosin) and bees wax. I can't remember the mixture, I think it was 3lbs rosin to 2 pounds beeswax, or something of that nature.
Rosin isn't as abundant or as cheap as it was in the mid 1800s, now days a Kilogram of it can cost anywhere from $150 to over $1000... unrefined pine sap is a little cheaper, but still relatively expensive and hard to source... the only difference between trystalized raw pine sap and rosin is that the pine sap has a higher concentration of the turpentine/terpenes that's present in the sap. Where Rosin is the hard plastic like byproduct of turpentine production. You put it to a slow low simmer in a still and you distillate off the turpentine, and what's left in the still is essentially rosin. Langstroth did this as a means of coating the hives with a propolis like substance and hopefully save the bees some work and allow them a little more time for foraging. As well as using it as a glue to adhere the glass panes together inside the box. It seems his hives were double walled, glass lined, and more triple walled, as the "cover" had side that came down over the outsides of the hive. So the hives we use now aren't Langstroth hives, they're "Root's" hives, which was a return to the "simple wooden boxes" that Langstroth despised and found to be insufficient for protection from heat and cold.
Anyway... everybody is always looking for ways to get woodenware to last longer or hold up to the weather better...
Why not a mixture of beeswax that's diluted a bit with some oil and Pine sap. The pine sap would make it harder, the oil would make it softer, once the boxes are built, I'm sure there's a way to set the oven on warm or set them out in the sun, and keep painting them with the melted mixture until the wood soaks up a lot of that mixture... which would be the oils, fats, etc that soak into the wood fibers and help delay deterioration.
Old dead dry wood rots when it's devoid of it's natural oils and moisture, wood that's properly saturated with oils cna last centuries without signs of age, if given another coat from time to time.
And as for bee attractant or "smell" for inside boxes. You always see people render wax at a boil with a layer of water underneath it. Many of the chemical compounds that make up the particular smell are VOCs and tracking down the boiling point (where the compound becomes volatile and boils off as a vapor) for each and every chemical compound would be a daunting or arduous task. Anyway... everybody always dumps the "dirty water" after rendering wax... what if one rendered wax more low and slow, closer to the melting point, and saved that water for brushing in and on swarm traps, new equipment, soaking burlap for Russian scions, etc?
Beeswax melts between 145-160F, crock pot "warm" settings are often set to keep it between 145-175F... seems like it woukd be simple for finding out if that "dirty water" can be put to good use.
However... one should probably keep in mind that hives showing obvious disease (especially of a fungal nature) should probably not be used in this manner. Disease is where there's a lack of beneficial microorganisms, and overgrowth of pathogenic microorganisms. And most bee diseases are of a fungal nature. So this process... it reaches a temperature where any active microbial cultures/cells woukd be killed off and pasteurized. But it doesn't reach a high enough temp to denature or destroy any spores.
So healthy hives, hives that died out from freezing or starvation, hives that absconded with no significant signs of disease or pests, etc would be suitable. Hives that show symptoms of disease or ill health probably shouldn't be used.
But... beeswax us a lipid (fat), much like how oils are also lipids but with a different structure. But... if you look at where cutouts are done on an old shed or barn and the wood is all rotted or faded.... the wood where the hive is, being treated and coated with wax and propolis, the wood there will often still be very solid and stable. I remember seeing a couple Jeff Horchoff videos where they pulled the siding off and you coukd see where the hive was, because the plywood or particle board all around was old and grey and dry, but where the colony was, the oils and everything had soaked all the way through the wood and you could still see the grain and detail. A few other examples, mixed with Reverand Langstroths description of his synthetic propolis... I kinda want to get some cheap raw hive boxes, pain Hive A, wax+oil+sap mixture saturate hive B, have hive C as an untreated Control, and see which lasts longer.
I have a feeling that the oil/wax mixture that's soaked into the wood will last longer than paint and untreated.
I may have babbled about this before. But I like the Acetone to dissolve propolis idea. It seems much more effective.
And now I'm curious as to whether Acetone would dissolve wax in the same manner. I suspect it might. Or at least partly dissolve it until it's a gooey gelatinous mess.lol
I love you videos. As always. Stay Curious and inquisitive.
Your brain works like mine, which worries me since they call you Crazy Ivan. 😁 If you look at the video I did on putting propolis tincture in a spray bottle, and change that up slightly by putting your more concentrated acetone based tincture in the bottle (cut with equal parts of 91% alcohol I think to start with anyway. I am going to spray some of that on some new frames soon. Based on your thoughts, I have put slivers of beeswax in a jar with acetone, but have not done any experiments yet. On the other hand, I can assure you that alcohol and heartwood pine sawdust makes a good propolis substitute so alcohol and pine resin should work the same. Actually, I just stopped typing and put a tablespoon of pine resin in an inch of acetone, swirled for 20 seconds and had a clear tincture. yep, it works.
Check Diamond G Forest Products, A small Georgia firm that is once again tapping Slash pine trees and processing naval stores. A pound of powdered resin is $25. Pebbled resin is $20/lb.
May I point out that all you need for your trials is a 4 inch by 12inch piece of Southern pine or Eastern White pine (decays faster) not a whole box. That is all the USFS Southern Experiment station uses for its tests. You might want to try linseed oil as your fat source in one test as well, or a harder oil like Walnut or Flaxseed.
I think maybe it was in my first video on prepping bucket traps that I opened a plastic bin that a swarm had moved into and demonstrated how the bees had propolized the kindling wood in the bottom and it looked like a layer of varnish. That is exactly the same way the wood in Mr. Ed's videos looked.
Keep me posted on your experiments.
Thanks for the ntip Rich.. I'll be trying that soon.. Does the acetone smell persist ???
I let the acetone evaporate out of the sludge experiment and it did not persist.