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water in honey

14K views 49 replies 13 participants last post by  Edaw 
#1 ·
I just did a cutout with some new honey/nectar. the hive was pretty productive for only a week and a half of residence. I crushed/strained and ended up with a somewhat runny couple of quarts of honey-ish nectar. Is it OK to heat it on low to evaporate some H2O? If so, is there a temp threshold so I don't ruin the goodness?
 
#36 ·
If the bees would take it it could be fed back to the bees. Did you give them a chance at it?

Quantity was my first draw back. If he had a barrel I would have told him of my friend who elevated a barrel of honey so it was a little higher than his wood stove. He laid a piece of rain gutter across the burning stove and had another barrel at the other end of the gutter. He punched a hole in the honey barrel allowing the honey to drip onto the gutter and travel down into the other barrel, drying down as it went.

I don't know if that is practical w/ 1 and 1/2 quarts of honey.

As far as revered regulars being offensive, people have their passions and their strong held opinions. So, disagreements will occur. Ce' la vie.
 
#40 ·
Actually I believe that as soon as the bees take the nectar into their honey stomach it has started the process of becoming honey and so therefore can no longer be considered nectar because the sugars have started inverting and changing, after that the bees put it into the cells and dry it. I doubt much additional inverting happens once the bees place it in the cells for drying.

As for the Pennsylvanian law I didn't see anywhere in there where it mentioned that a beekeeper can't use dehumidifiers to lower the moisture content of their honey. The law appears to me to focus on no adding anything to the honey and still calling it honey.

I don't personally have a refractometer and so there for don't know what the moisture percentage of my honey is. I do know this that bees will cap honey that ISN'T 18.??% moisture, and they will leave uncapped honey that is well below that. For me I do try to pull mostly capped honey, anything that isn't capped gets banged upside down on the hive, if nothing comes out it's done (I don't have the type of nectars around here that would be thick and still high moisture). This has been my practice for the last 10 years that I have been a beekeeper and I have NEVER had honey ferment on me, nor have I had a customer complain (every jar has my # on it). I do make sure to run the air conditioner and the dehumidifier before, during, and after extracting (until it's all bottled) to make sure that the honey I'm extracting doesn't absorb moisture from the 90% humidity Misery weather that we tend to have during extracting season.

As for the OP's question. I'm baffled as to why he doesn't just feed it back to the bees (sure taste some) and get honey later (might be next year). BUT I WANT HONEY NOW, yeah and I WANT THE WINNING POWERBALL TICKET TOO!!!! LOL
 
#42 ·
Mark (sqkcrk), I see now that I quoted you in my post #38. While the quote itself is accurate, it is not relevant to the point I hoped to make in post #38. I had intended to quote a portion of Tenbears post #37, but screwed it up. I apologize for messing that up and dragging you back into the thread at that point.

(I would go back and change my post #38, but the time for editing older posts has expired.)
 
#44 ·
It's funny how I have been away from reading this thread for a couple days and I come back and it's still going strong, well maybe it's starting to wane a bit, hopefully. Tenbears had some strong personal opinions on what constitutes quality honey, and he backed it up with quotes from the Pennsylvania law, and that's totally fine, but I took offense to him calling the OP's uncured nectar, and my honey for that matter, "garbage", because I occasionally have to remove a point or two of moisture from it to get it to 18% or slightly under. John
 
#46 ·
John,
I know I easily take offense at times, but I'm trying to remember that I don't really know you or Tenbears or the OPer, so taking offense at something someone wrote is kinda silly. I'm trying to keep that in mind when I read something which seems pointed at me on a personal level. For whatever that is worth.

When I am working hives I sometimes shake bees off of combs before putting them into nuc boxes or other hives. Nectar shakes out of the combs onto my boots. Least that's what I and friends I talk to call it. We don't say "Honey was shaking out today." or "Unripe honey was shaking out today." So that's why I would characterize what this "water in honey" Thread is about. Not really water in honey, but uncured or unripe honey which I would characterize as nectar.
 
#45 · (Edited)
It disheartens me to see you revered regulars being offensive to each other.
Will just wanted to salvage something, he wasn't trying to sell it, so the USDA rules aren't applicable in his case.
I had a bucket of honey with too high-water content which fermented. I didn't want to dump it in the garbage and it certainly can't be fed back to the bees, so I made MEAD with some of it.
Becky,

Had the mead suggestion been offered sooner the "revered regulars" (some of which may, or may not be "Old Farts") could have been discussing the virtues of fine fermentables... :gh:


Note to Will:

Once the "Old Fart" card is played, the gloves come off, and most assuredly, hell-fart and brimstone will rain down upon your thread...
 
#47 ·
Mark, well, maybe taking offense by what someone said was not really the best choice of words from my end, especially since what Tenbears originally said was not directed at me personally but someone else. I was just defending a method of removing excessive moisture that I have used and I know many others do, and the resulting product is still honey, not garbage, at least IMO. There are proper words to describe what we are talking about here, unripe nectar/unripe honey=nectar, there we both said it. John
 
#49 ·
Context is important Edaw. The new guy was over stepping his bounds if he was assuming a certain level of familiarity. KInda like being the new guy in the Bee Club. During the coffee break socializing time it would be rude for the new guy to walk up and refer to people he didn't know as "you Old Farts". Don't you think? I thought it was an aggressive act. And if you will notice, he ain't around any more. So, I think that says it was a cowardly attack too. Maybe.
 
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