How many jars of honey in a year?

[Curly green finger's]

My take home from thinking about all this capped honey is that the situation is far from static and if you timelapsed a portion of comb over time in an active colony you'd probably be amazed at how dynamic the situation is, especially in the spring, when bees will uncap, move about , use some and recap comb in a fairly continuous flow of work.
The idea of honey getting ripe and being capped and then job done and nothing changes until a beekeeper comes along to harvest is unlikely to be a truthful picture.

I was wondering about capped honey the other way crystalizing stores being warmed up and then water added before the water is added is the uncapped honey warmed up to a temperature to make it somewhere near liquid before they uncap it and add water to use it?
I hope the question is understood?

 

[Erichalfbee]

I was wondering about capped honey the other way crystalizing stores being warmed up and then water added before the water is added is the uncapped honey warmed up to a temperature to make it somewhere near liquid before they uncap it and add water to use it?
I hope the question is understood?

You mean do the bees add water to crystallised honey before they uncap it?
I'm sure the bees uncap the crystallised honey and use collected water and the water/humidity in the hive. For example Ivy honey which easily absorbs air humidity to allow access to the bees

 

[user 20297]

I was wondering about capped honey the other way crystalizing stores being warmed up and then water added before the water is added is the uncapped honey warmed up to a temperature to make it somewhere near liquid before they uncap it and add water to use it?
I hope the question is understood?

I think I understand what you're asking; but I'm pretty sure bees are unable to generate the temperature of >140C required to melt crystallised honey. ☀
I presume that they do what I used to do when enjoying a barley-sugar stick of crystallised glucose, and exude water from their mouthparts onto the surface of the honey, and then draw up the dissolved honey back into their honey-stomach. There would be no point in them skipping the easy stage of scraping off the wax-capping.

 

[North End Bees]

I'm pretty sure bees are unable to generate the temperature of >140C required to melt crystallised honey. ☀

???

 

[user 20297]

???

I was wrongly equating with rock hard, pure crystallised glucose, which honey is not

Bees won't melt it though....will they? Dissolve it surely? What is the actual temperature needed to liquify honey from crystalline?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bees won't melt it though....will they? Dissolve it surely?

#Yes

What is the actual temperature needed to liquify honey from crystalline?

depends on what it is, 35-60°C

 

[North End Bees]

What is the actual temperature needed to liquify honey from crystalline?

30°c in the warming cabinet overnight works fine for a crystallised bucket.

Easily manageable for a bee whose brood is kept warmer than that.
(Not that bees keep their honey as warm as their brood!)

 

[user 20297]

#Yes

depends on what it is, 35-60°C

Bloody bees.....amazing again!

 

[Curly green finger's]

30°c in the warming cabinet overnight works fine for a crystallised bucket.

Easily manageable for a bee whose brood is kept warmer than that.
(Not that bees keep their honey as warm as their brood!)

Oops apologies.

 

[madasafish]

If bees can generate 140C then I'll save the planet and ditch my gas powered blowlamp

 

[user 819]

I suspect that they uses their mandibles to work the hard set honey and then once it is pliable add the moisture, only evidence I can give to this is my eyes seeing crystals of ivy honey lost beneath the omf either on the insert board or on the ground.

 

[user 819]

If bees can generate 140C then I'll save the planet and ditch my gas powered blowlamp

At those temps I would turn off the boiler and have a hive in the house for central heating.

 

[gmonag]

At those temps I would turn off the boiler and have a hive in the house for central heating.

Actually, that is precisely what Ian Steppler (Canadian Beekeeper) did when the heating system in his honey building failed recently!

 

[Antipodes]

It makes me wonder then why do bees not, as a matter of course just cap the unripe honey to be ripened later at their leisure, rather than leave it uncapped for ages during a flow before finally capping it when the moisture level is sub 18%

They don't always wait to "finally cap it when the moisture level is sub 18%". Sometimes they cap it when it is wetter than that. Do you have and use a refractometer?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

They don't always wait to "finally cap it when the moisture level is sub 18%". Sometimes they cap it when it is wetter than that.

Do they really?

Do you have and use a refractometer?

Yes, frequently use a refractometer, never found capped stores over 18%, even when I know they have only just capped it.

 

[Finman]

Double brood and six supers

And then good pastures.

.

 

[Antipodes]

Do they really?

Yes, frequently use a refractometer, never found capped stores over 18%, even when I know they have only just capped it.

I'm impressed. I extracted capped honey from the rainforest recently, and in some frames it just fell from the frame as I uncapped it with the cold uncapping knife. That honey (from the capping region), had a moisture content of 21.2 % (see attached photo). The most wet seemed to be the outermost frames, presumably the most recently capped, and particularly where there was extra width to the honey.

 

[Erichalfbee]

It seems that SOME bees........ in Australia for sure ...... cap high water content honey for some reason. Does it matter? Probably not.
We should all be taking refractometer readings of our honey at some stage before sale. anyway, surely?

 

[Nannysbees]

I'm impressed. I extracted capped honey from the rainforest recently, and in some frames it just fell from the frame as I uncapped it with the cold uncapping knife. That honey (from the capping region), had a moisture content of 21.2 % (see attached photo). The most wet seemed to be the outermost frames, presumably the most recently capped, and particularly where there was extra width to the honey.

From the rainforest, how interesting, tell us more about it please

 

[Antipodes]

From the rainforest, how interesting, tell us more about it please

The leatherwood tree flowers every year in our cool temperate rainforests and produces a very, very wonderful honey and grows in the western half of this heart shaped island. Because of the rugged terrain and wet weather there, the area is predominately uninhabited, but has spectacular mountains and plants and is of outstanding global significance.
The cool rainforest is very humid. I'm learning about how bees desiccate nectar, and trying to work out how they do it there...very impressive!

As to jars of honey in a year, one of the leading honey producers here says that you can only expect two good years in every ten. I guess that is interspersed with bad years, mediocre years and so on. It was the worst year ever known here a couple of years back, but for leatherwood, this year has apparently been the best in the last seven.