Extracting Crystallized Honey

[mrsherw...@gmail.com]

Hello Everyone,

Any advice on how to extract honey that's crystallized from honeycomb?  Is it possible to do without destroying the comb?  As an alternative, if I give the combs back to the bees will the bees eat crystallized honey?

Thanks!

Mike Sherwood

[Mark Burlingame]

My understanding is that the bees will clear it out, but will defer to someone with a bit more specific understanding.  Mark

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[Gerald Przybylski]

The tendency of the honey to granulate depends on what the bees have been foraging on.
Blackberry honey seems to have a greater tendency to granulate.
One guesses that the honey is higher in glucose rather than fructose. 
The books say Canola honey is prone to granulate too.

Major Bremze (Vallejo) had some advice on what to do with frames of granulated honey.
He noted that bees prefer to store honey above the brood area, so you can exploit their programming.
He suggests putting the granulated honey below the brood box of a strong colony.
Make sure the bees have access to plenty of water.  They will bring in water and dissolve the honey,
then move it up into the supers over weeks or months.

The other option is to do what you'd do with a jar of granulated honey...
Namely keep it at a temperature between 100ºF and 120ºF until the crystals melt away.
You can do this by setting up a warming chamber with incandescent light bulb(s) for heat sources,
and a better-than-average thermostat you can set at 115ºF that controls the power to the "heaters."
There should be a small fan inside the warming chamber to circulate the air so you don't get hot spots.
(a personal comfort fan like a HOMEBASIX LF-4PB Personal Fan, 4-Inch fan is what I had in mind.)
To check on your set-up drill a small hole in the box, and insert the business-end of one
of those $10 pointy digital kitchen thermometers. It'll be close enough.
Once the honey is reliquified, you can extract it.
You probably shouldn't give it the frames back to the bees in the fall. It's likely to granulate again.
Bees can't consume granulated honey during winter.

You could build a 2 or 3 story tower of bee boxes into a warming chamber.
Stack them on a migratory bottom board, and cover with a solid top cover.
Your heater, fan and thermostat sensor go in the lowest box.
The wires poke through the entrance. The rest of the entrance is blocked off to reduce heat loss.
Tune up the heater system until it holds the temperature you desire.
Then put the granulated frames in an upper box. The fan should blow up toward the frames.
Watch the setup closely until you know you can trust it.
(don't let the heater sit directly on the wood...  it might be a fire hazard)

jerry

On 2/14/16 6:36 PM, Mark Burlingame wrote: