- Joined
- Jun 20, 2009
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- 2,428
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- Location
- Kingsbridge, South Devon
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- 0 - Now in beeless retirement!
You will often read or hear said that if the honey is capped it is safe to extract. This is not always true and can be another trap for the unwary.
I heard recently from a friend who had found capped honey with a moisture content of over 21% and some uncapped honey with a content of 19%. The high moisture content of the capped honey was odd and I would probably have been inclined to think he had made a mistake except this weekend I came across a similar situation myself.
I was running a demonstration of extracting for our local association and the super we were working on was 100% capped. Not a single open cell so it should have been fine for extracting.
After demonstrating uncapping on the first frame I checked the moisture content as a way of demonstrating the use of the refractometer, not expecting to find anything odd. The first reading taken was 21.5%! We repeated on another sample from the same frame with the same result.
Fortunately, other frames were better, some down to 18.5% but overall the 25 pounds of honey we got from the National super was 19.5% which is pretty marginal in my view given this was a fully capped super.
So the lesson learned was don't assume a capped frame of honey has a moisture content of under 20%, several in this one super were not.
I don't know what the honey was - very light coloured and from mixed farmland and woods.
Has anyone else come across this?
I heard recently from a friend who had found capped honey with a moisture content of over 21% and some uncapped honey with a content of 19%. The high moisture content of the capped honey was odd and I would probably have been inclined to think he had made a mistake except this weekend I came across a similar situation myself.
I was running a demonstration of extracting for our local association and the super we were working on was 100% capped. Not a single open cell so it should have been fine for extracting.
After demonstrating uncapping on the first frame I checked the moisture content as a way of demonstrating the use of the refractometer, not expecting to find anything odd. The first reading taken was 21.5%! We repeated on another sample from the same frame with the same result.
Fortunately, other frames were better, some down to 18.5% but overall the 25 pounds of honey we got from the National super was 19.5% which is pretty marginal in my view given this was a fully capped super.
So the lesson learned was don't assume a capped frame of honey has a moisture content of under 20%, several in this one super were not.
I don't know what the honey was - very light coloured and from mixed farmland and woods.
Has anyone else come across this?
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