#theres muscle-wires everywhere

[alteredsilicone]

I just love the anatomical aspects of Albrecht's labs, the Netracell welcoming you with open hands...

[resident-beekeeper]

This is a continuation of this post, because that was getting far too long so I thought I'd split it up.

When it gets to autumn it's time to get honey and wax.

Early autumn mind, so the bees have plenty of time to build up depleted stores ready for winter.

Geralt puts bee escapes in the hives they're collecting from (basically 1 way gate things that gets all the bees out of a super so they aren't there when you take it away), but obviously not in all of them because not all the colonies are strong enough to give honey.

Of course Jaskier insists upon helping Geralt carry the supers into their house because there are quite a lot of them.

Only it turns out that honey is very heavy and he doesn't have the upper body strength to lift a super and then carry it any distance. So Geralt takes it off his hands.

In his defence he did try very hard to lift a full super. Definitely gets points for effort, if nothing else.

The kitchen then gets covered in cardboard and sheets are hung up to cover the door frames. It is also thoroughly cleaned so the honey is free of bacteria and stuff.

Now it's time for spinning.

Geralt is old fashioned in his beekeeping and so has a hand powered centrifuge. Which means that he needs to spend a while spinning the honey round and round to get it out of the wax. It's pretty hard work and his muscles look very good.

This is the best picture I could find on the internet of a centrifuge. Mine is a little different and has a lid to help avoid spillages but its currently underneath a lot of stuff because I won't need it for several months. Anyway Geralt would spin the handle that's on the side.

Jaskier is on holding the centrifuge steady duty because he's strong enough for that, and not trusted with a knife. It also gives him a chance to look at Geralt's muscles but shhh.

Yennefer for some reason is trusted with a knife, so she's cutting the caps off the cells. (Honey gets little wax lid things put on it by bees to preserve it, called caps. This needs cutting off so that the centrifuge gets it out properly. A hot knife is best to cut through wax because it melts ot a bit.)

Ciri is in charge of giving Yennefer the honeycomb to cut the caps off, removing the wax that had been spun from the centrifuge from its wooden frames and giving hot water to Yennefer to heat up her knife.

Which sound like a lot but it doesn't take much to move around frames, and the hot water only needs replacing every 15 minutes or so. So it's only 1 proper job really.

This makes it sound a lot calmer than it was. It was highly highly chaotic.

For one thing, honey gets fucking everywhere and is very sticky. But it's also surprisingly slippery when theres above a certain amount in 1 place.

Jaskier keeps eating bits of honeycomb with honey in which slowly makes him feel sick from all the sweetness. But also now hes got beeswax in his mouth and nowhere to put it. And if you chew beeswax for long enough it gets all crumbly.

Ciri, Geralt, and Yennefer's hair gets honey and small bits of wax in it even though its tied back. None of them can go outside in case bees or wasps find them and follow them back inside to where all the honey is.

When all of the honey has been spun, and then transferred into a settling bin (a smaller tub that you put honey in to let bits of wax rise to the top so its easier to get them out of the honey) it's time to deal with the sticky wax.

Geralt and Ciri normally make beeswax candles together, but the wax needs to not have any honey in it otherwise it smells of burnt sugar when it burns and smokes a bit.

So they need to separate out the honey and wax by melting it. (Wax is hydrophobic and less dense than honey so it rises to the top and when it solidifies you can take it off in blocks. This often needs to happen twice.)

They all gather up the wax that Ciri got out of the frames and squash it into some metal dishes that Geralt has for wax melting. (I do not have this sort of thing, but I figured Geralt probably would. Instead I use dishes that are also used for food which are always a massive pain to clean.)

They then get put into the oven which is on very low, and left for a while. Geralt takes them out when the wax has melted because it's a lot of hot liquid that really needs to not be spilled especially because wax is very hard to get off stuff.

There's lots of metal wires in the wax that need taking out with great care, so of course Jaskier underestimates how hot the melted wax actually is, reaches into the wax to get the wires out, and promptly burns himself.

Ciri takes out the wire with a fork so that she doesn't burn herself.

She also takes out the wax that hasn't melted, which is bad for making candles with. (I have no idea why there is wax like that but there always is. Its generally a different colour too.)

Once its cooled down, Ciri takes the wax and cleans it. (Theres always gunk inbetween the honey and wax when it separates.)

Every year as a treat, Geralt lets Ciri choose one extra candle mould when she makes candles. At this point she has about 10, because she started off with more than 1 anyway.

This year she decides on a light house because she doesn't have many tall candle moulds.

Jaskier gets wind of this and decides he wants to get Geralt one. So he gets the THORNE catalogue and looks at the candle moulds. (THORNE is a supplier of bee stuff. There's so much stuff you can buy from them, including a bee suit with knee pads built into it. They sell candle moulds too, along with wicks.)

There are a lot of potential candles for Jaskier to choose from.

He's very tempted by the 'lovers' one because he is giving it to Geralt.

But then he turns the page and sees a candle that has been censored for the magazine.

And it is called '50 shades of wax'. So of course Jaskier has to get it because hes almost certain Geralt's reaction will be priceless. (This particular candle is one that I saw in a THORNE catalogue. I have no idea how many people would ever want to buy it, especially because you couldn't see what was going on because it had a red box covering most of it that said '18+' on it.)

He orders it separately from Ciri's though, because it needs to be a surprise and also he doesn't want to explain to Ciri why he got it for her dad.

When it arrives he shows it to Geralt just before they're about to go to bed.

Geralt isn't really aware of books that have come out even slightly recently, unless it's something that Ciri likes.

So when he sees what it's called, and especially without knowing what it looks like (it's a solid mould and a relatively complicated design so it's difficult to see what it is) hes just really confused.

Because of course you can dye wax so that it's different colours, but those aren't really shades?

And beeswax does come in slightly different colours, but that's normally impurities in the wax, rather than the wax itself being a different shade.

So Geralt just looks at it in confusion for a long time.

Jaskier eventually puts him out of his misery by explaining why it's called that, and roughly what it will look like.

But by this point the mood Jaskier was hoping for has well and truly been spoiled.

But at least he got a laugh out of it, if not how he was expecting to.

That's probably enough for now? I'm definitely gonna add more. They still need to feed the bees and actually make candles. Among other stuff.

(@jaskierisanangel because someone wanted to be tagged so they could see more? Which is wild to me but also makes me so happy)