Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => General Beekeeping => Topic started by: rober on September 20, 2021, 02:21:02 pm
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my uncapping station is a laundry sink with a heavy stainless steel rack on top & a bucket with a strainer under the drain. after uncapping an extractor load i put the cappings into a bucket. i overturn those buckets onto the rack & let it drain overnight. coming out of the extractor all my honey has been in the 17-almost 18% range. the honey from the uncappings is right at 22%. the bucket the uncappings are in has a strainer on it but for all practical purposes it is wide open. can honey pick up that much moisture being open to the air for 14-16 hours? i tried running a fan over the top of the bucket overnight & it went up to 23%. is there any way to reduce the moisture? my alternative is to refrigerate it & use it myself because i can't sell it or feed it to the bees. i have 2 partial buckets full, around 4 gallons.
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I think honey does absorb moisture from the air.
We had heavy rains this Spring turning our bee yard into a swamp. When we harvested, our swamp honey had 23% moisture. We harvested only a few frames at a time this year, so there was only one bucket involved. We placed the bucket in a small washroom with a small dehumidifier (purchased from Lowes or Home Depot hardware) running full blast. We were able to dry out the honey in about a week. The drying took less time when we poured some of the honey into jars, giving more exposed surface area. We kept netting over everything to keep stuff from falling in.
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i have a large pot that i fill with water & put 3 gallon buckets of crystalized honey in. i set the hot plate to medium & it warms the honey to 90*. i loosen the lid so it doesn't build pressure. when i open these buckets afterwards there is always some condensation on the lid. i put the open bucket of 22% honey on this set up at noon with a fan blowing over it. i just checked it & it's down to 21% already. looks like this might work.
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6 hours in & it's at 19%. i'll let it go overnight. i now suspect that honey with high moisture content could just been the honey on the surface. when i'm thru i'll dump it into another bucket & check it again.
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happy to report that after 18 hours it's at 17%.
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I was gonna say to take a sample from down deeper in the bucket. Absorbing moisture is just like removing it. Its gonna do the surface first.
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after pouring it into another bucket it was a fuzz under 17%. i'm calling it a win.