The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Bees & Beekeeping => Topic started by: starcana on August 16, 2011, 10:34:26 am
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oh, so proud. Up till 3am this morning getting my honey into jars. First year for proper honey (last year I only got late swarms and ended up with late ivy honey, which was not very nice and went like concrete in the jars). Got 19lb of beautiful golden, runny honey. Now,I know that if it crystallises I can re-invigorate gently in a trough of warm water, BUT if I store the jars at the back of my Aga, which is in a very deep inglenook, will that keep it at a good temperature all the time or should it be stored in a cool place. Views welcome please.
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Store it in a cool dark place and warm a jar up if you need to.
:bee:
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Keep it cool and I hope you enjoy your own honey.
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We had some honey ferment last year, mostly because it was a little high in water content, so it can happen. It was, by the way, absolutely delicious but we had to consume it all at home. One of the nicer challenges of the year.
We recalibrated our refractometer which apparently should be done every year and almost never is done. Thus year's honey has been coming in with a very low water content but we've had drought conditions.
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You can do several things to help the honey be more manageable.
Such as buying a small pot of creamed honey ..the crystals in it will be very fine . mix the small pot in to some of your liquid honey and let it cool to almost setting then whisk it with a " pig tail " and a power drill so that the crystalization seeds are evenly dispersed through out your honey.. it turns a creamy bwhitish colour ,let it stand a day then bottle it .
The small crystalization and whisking will usually keep it soft at room temp .
If you keep it at too high a temp you risk ruining the honey by either fermentation if the moisture content is at the top end of acceptability or the developing off flavours .
Once you have your own creamed honey keep a pot ot two aside for further innocculations .
late honey & other honey taken off ..look at the colour of the pollen in the brood box and using a pollen chart identify it ..... if the majority is the colour for ragwort pollen or the same as that of ivy , be careful
Those honeys can give you head aches and the runs , best to hold that honey back and blend in with next years rape honey to dilute things .
to the best of myb knowledge no one should be taking honey off a hive it is too late .. the bees will need some natural honey stores as well as what you feed them .
Most people I knew with lots of bees stopped taking it off the hive at the end of the second or third week of August unless the bees were put to the heather .