Drying Honey (To Prevent Fermentation)

Honey can crystallize, but will never go bad…right? Well that is true for “dry” honey, but not for “wet” honey. Wet honey will ferment. Fermentation isn’t a bad thing if you’re a mead maker, but it’s awful if you’re trying to produce and sell a premium honey and build a brand that is trusted.

Moisture is key to honey fermentation, and climate can have a huge impact on honey moisture. I live in Tennessee, which receives 55-65 inches of rain per year and is known for hot and humid summers. Nectar collected in June may still be uncapped in August or September depending on the weather, simply because the bees can’t dry it down enough.

Timing of the honey harvest is another concern. July to August is the peak varroa mite season, meaning I need to get my Oxalic Acid Vaporization treatment regimen (6 treatments at 4 day intervals) started by late July to early August.

All this leads to a complex problem that can be tricky to navigate without the right tools.

• Goal – produce premium honey that will not ferment
• Humid environment means bees may not dry honey down and cap it until August or September
• Varroa Mite Treatments need to be started by late July to early August
• I do not treat with honey supers on hives in the interest of producing a premium honey

It seems like a Catch 22 right? If I wait until all frames are capped then I miss my varroa mite treatment window and may have a huge negative effect on the health of my hives. If I pull supers that are uncapped then I have to worry about my honey fermenting.

How to deal with wet honey:

1. Feed uncapped honey back to the bees.
2. Dry uncapped honey down to a shelf stable moisture content.

Fermentation in honey is determined by moisture content, temperature, and yeast spore count.

• Honey stored at 52°F or lower will not ferment.
• Honey with a very low yeast spore count of 1 per gram will usually not ferment with a moisture content of 19%. (Mangrove honey is known for low yeast spore counts.)
• Honey with a very high yeast spore count of 1000 per gram may ferment with a moisture content of 18%. (Cabbage Palm honey is known for high yeast spore counts.)
• Honey will not normally ferment at a 17% or lower moisture content.

A great article on honey quality was written by Bob Binnie at Blue Ridge Honey Company for Bee Culture. It is available at this link – Processing Honey : A Closer Look. I highly recommend you read his article if you want to learn more about producing premium quality honey.

I chose to try to dry down my uncapped honey. If it worked, this would increase my harvest, and therefore my income for the year. Since I am in my second year and trying hard to reach breakeven on my operational investment, income and cash flow are priorities.

Accomplishing this goal was aided by my new honey house, a shipping container that I spray foam insulated. This tight building allows me to control the temperature and humidity precisely.

Drying honey relies on four keys:

1. Humidity
2. Temperature
3. Air Movement
4. Surface Area

I reduced humidity by installing a whole house dehumidifier into my 160 square foot shipping container. Temperature also affects humidity, as warmer temps hold more moisture, thereby dropping humidity. I’ll put that another way…It’s easier to get 90° air down to 30% than it is to get 70° degree air to 30% moisture, because the warmer air molecules are further apart and hold more moisture.

The dehumidifier did it’s job, and by running continuously kept the humidity level in my honey house at 30%. The following chart shows what moisture level honey will eventually reach when exposed to different humidity levels.

I held temps at 85° to 92° in an unheated / uncooled building by using a portable air conditioner and a 1500 watt space heater both connected to an InkBird Temperature Controller. The temp controller turns on the AC if the temp is too hot, and turns on the heat if it is too low.

Airflow I attacked by column stacking my supers on top of boards to allow a gap at the bottom. I then laid a box fan on top of the stack and blew air down through the entire stack. At the time I only had one box fan available, and feel that I stacked supers too high because of this. I think that stacks of 5 to 7 mediums each with a fan would be ideal.

Honey has a poor diffusion rate, making it very difficult to dry honey that is already in a bucket or barrel. You can dry the surface, but what is under the surface remains wet. So it takes a very long time, or a lot of stirring to dry already extracted honey. Conversely, honey still in the comb has a LOT of surface area. This means it is much easier to dry honey that is still in the comb.

Small Hive Beetle Timebomb

The longer you dry honey the drier it gets, but leave it too long in a small hive beetle area and they’ll ruin the whole lot. I’m comfortable leaving supers stacked and drying for 2-3 days after pulling from hives, but much longer than 4 days I feel the risk becomes too large for my appetite.

Refractometer (if you don’t have one, get one)

Testing honey moisture requires a Refractometer, which can be affordable or expensive. As in most things, you get what you pay for. I opted for an inexpensive model and a lot of testing to try and negate any inherent accuracy errors.

Using a refractometer to test honey moisture is pretty simple. I stored a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in my honey house so it would be at the same temperature as my honey. EVOO has strict standards for moisture content, so I used it as an inexpensive calibration fluid.

Test the EVOO, set the refractometer to 71.5 on the Brix scale, clean it, and test the honey. Very simple.

I tested many frames, but one frame in particular was a bellwether. I checked this frame the day of harvest and it read 20.5% moisture. I tested it two days after harvest and it read 18% moisture. I left the stack one more day, and on day three this uncapped honey read 15.5% moisture.

A huge weakness had become a huge strength! My uncapped honey that had been an unusable / unsellable product would now DRY DOWN the capped honey I mixed it with.

Moisture will eventually move through wax cappings, but it is a very slow process. My capped honey was testing at anywhere from 16% to 18.5% moisture, and my uncapped honey was reading 15.5% to 18%. I didn’t count this exactly, but I would estimate that at least 30% of my frames were partially or fully uncapped, even though the last major flow ended 2 to 3 weeks prior.

Successful Drying, Successful Harvest

All in all I was able to dry down all of my uncapped frames within 3 days from harvest to below 18% moisture. I feel like this is a necessity for the premium honey I’m trying to build my operation around. I ended up with 13 five gallon buckets for somewhere around 750 lbs, after starting the year with 9 hives.

Now on to summer hive management, some electrical work, moving a bottling tank, bottling honey, building shelves, and marketing my honey.

References:

I borrowed heavily from the facts and figures in Bob Binnie’s article on Bee Culture, and cannot recommend it enough – Processing Honey : A Closer Look