How to Clean Your Leather Beekeeping Gloves
Cleaning Your Beekeeping Gloves
Do you wear gloves while tending your bees? Most beekeepers rely on gloves at least part of the time, and these gloves often include leather components. If you’ve only worn leather beekeeping gloves a few times, you likely noticed how dirty they can become. Propolis, wax, honey, bee stings, crushed hive beetles, and various stains tend to accumulate on them. The sooner you clean your gloves after use, the better your chances of removing these marks.
Clean gloves help beekeepers handle bees and hive components with greater confidence and dexterity, ensuring tasks are performed efficiently and safely.
Cleaning Solutions You Can Buy To Wash Your Gloves
You could also use a damp paper towel or damp cloth and some saddle soap to clean the leather parts of your gloves, but saddle soap will dry out the natural oils in leather more than any other cleaning solution. Another available cleaning solution for leather gloves is Leather Honey leather cleaner, which claims to work just as well on faux leather and vinyl. Use these solutions by moistening a lint-free or damp microfiber cloth and rubbing the saddle soap or other product on the entire glove surface, then rubbing off any residue.
Griot’s leather cleaner is one more great product for leather cleaning. This is a mild leather soap most often used for automotive interiors. It is gentle and effective, and includes conditioners for the leather.
No matter which of these cleaning methods you choose, you may not be able to remove all the stains on your gloves, but if you can just remove the propolis residue and surface grime, your gloves will feel cleaner and won’t be sticky.
Drying And Conditioning Process For Leather Gloves
After washing and scrubbing your leather gloves, rinse the soap residue off and lay the wet gloves flat to dry at room temperature, or stuff them with newspaper to let air get inside the gloves and to help retain their shape.
You can pat dry excess moisture on the gloves with a towel first. Allow your gloves to air dry completely, out of direct sunlight. After the cleaning process, when your gloves dry, they will probably be stiff and need conditioning.
Even though leather gloves are soft and flexible, whatever soap you use will remove a lot of moisture. Even goat skin will get hard and need to be conditioned.
Conditioning Leather Gloves
When your clean leather gloves are completely dry, you’ll need to condition the leather. There are many options for this, ranging from whatever vegetable oil you have in your kitchen (I have used canola oil before with good results) to products designed for leather glove care, a leather conditioner, like a leather cream or mink oil.
Whichever you choose, you’ll just rub the leather conditioner into the leather parts of your gloves, and then give it some time to soak in before you rub off any residue.
Your gloves should be cleaner and softer after this process. If your gloves are still a little stiff after cleaning and conditioning, don’t worry. After you wear them and work in them a little, they’ll soften up again.
Don’t Forget About The Inside Of Your Gloves
When washing leather gloves, don’t forget to clean the gloves inside, too. If you are able to turn them inside out, you could clean them like that. If not, you can sprinkle baking soda inside to deodorize the interior, or you can use whatever soap you used to clean the outside of the glove for the inside, too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I wash leather work gloves in the washing machine?
Despite the heavy duty use of beekeeping gloves, the leather and canvas or ventilated cloth need to be treated as delicate material. If you wash your gloves in the washing machine, use the delicate or hand wash cycle with cold water or lukewarm water. Do not put your clean leather gloves in the clothes dryer!
How can I get really bad stains out of my gloves?
If the above washing process doesn’t get the stains out to your satisfaction, try using a soft brush or a sudsy cloth and some oxi-clean to treat stains again, then condition the leather again. Avoid rubbing alcohol or harsh chemicals, as these can damage your leather.
Does it matter if my beekeeping gloves have stains?
The bees don’t care if you have stains on your gloves. They do care about the lingering pheromones from bee stingers, and you will care if your gloves are sticky. Don’t stress about stains on your gloves, but clean gloves will make it easier to do your beekeeping tasks.