Can I feed crystallised OSR honey back to the bees?

[horrob0]

I’ve misjudge one of my supers and have ended up with a 5-6 frames of crystallised honey from OSR. I’ve been doing some reading, and as OSR honey is not the best anyway, I think i’ve decided to sacrifice the honey and feed the crystallised honey back to the bees in preparation winter.

I plan to do this by putting the super under the brood box (separated by the a spare excluder) and either scoring or removing the capping from the frames. I’ll then either spray the frames with water or dunk the frames in a bucket of water. Hopefully this way the bees will clean up the frames, moving the honey into the brood box for winter?

Does this make sense? Any issues with this? Any thoughts?

 

[Queens59]

Yes - and if they store it - then it goes softer...

 

[horrob0]

Thanks. Should I only feed it back to the hive it come from?

 

[YorkshireBees]

Thanks. Should I only feed it back to the hive it come from?

If you are sure the honey / frames came from your own (non diseased) hive I personally do not see any reason why you cannot give it to another hive.

I regularly use frames of food from one of my hives in another of my hives as I am pretty sure that they are all at present healthy.

I do however disagree with your conclusion regarding OSR based honey.
It makes great softset honey and is regularly bought by my customers.

 

[horrob0]

Thanks for your advice. I only have a couple of hives and tend to consume most of my honey myself plus a friend and family. I’m personally not a big fan off OSR honey but that’s just a personal preference. Plus it now so crystallised it’s going to make harvesting it very difficult. My fault for letting it get this way in the first place!

 

[YorkshireBees]

Thanks for your advice. I only have a couple of hives and tend to consume most of my honey myself plus a friend and family. I’m personally not a big fan off OSR honey but that’s just a personal preference. Plus it now so crystallised it’s going to make harvesting it very difficult. My fault for letting it get this way in the first place!

Of course it comes down to personal preference and if you have tried it and don't like it then that's your decision. What I don't like is when someone hasn't tried something and just goes by what another has said. (Obviously not your case).

If it's chrystalized then ofc it's too late anyway!
I do suffer from some chrystalization in frames and geneally try and get the bees to shift it one way or another.