OSR honey and how to deal with it

[thada1]

well, the formal answer would be to assess with a microscope >500 grains of pollen following a standard method of extraction. If the number of brassica napa grains is >60%, then it would be reasonable to assume that it's monofloral OSR. The relevant science is in Apidologie 35 (2004) S18–S25, "Harmonized methods of melissopalynology", VON DER OHE et al.
This is clearly a job for specialised honey analysis labs, but you could get an idea with less rigorous methods - sedimenting out the pollen, staining, and microscopy at 400x. Although, having just done this at the weekend on a microscopy course with Cazza and others, it's not a 5min job!
Here are some pictures from Bcrazy

 

[Cazza]

well, the formal answer would be to assess with a microscope >500 grains of pollen following a standard method of extraction. If the number of brassica napa grains is >60%, then it would be reasonable to assume that it's monofloral OSR. The relevant science is in Apidologie 35 (2004) S18–S25, "Harmonized methods of melissopalynology", VON DER OHE et al.
This is clearly a job for specialised honey analysis labs, but you could get an idea with less rigorous methods - sedimenting out the pollen, staining, and microscopy at 400x. Although, having just done this at the weekend on a microscopy course with Cazza and others, it's not a 5min job!
Here are some pictures from Bcrazy

SWOT!

 

[Skyhook]

How will I know?

Probably a silly question, but... if there's a field of OSR a mile away I don't klnow about, how would I know that's what they're bringing back?

 

[Nopants]

has anyone had a successfull OSR honey crop this year??

two swarms on one hive... lots of wet stores in the brood box, but have been ignoring the supers completely.

Have deployed another two hives to try and squeeze some out before it is over :-(

Same problem here, Brood box has been filled up instead of supers. No where for the queen left to lay so she goes without warning..

 

[MuswellMetro]

Same problem here, Brood box has been filled up instead of supers. No where for the queen left to lay so she goes without warning..

is it old foundation in the super?, you could try spraying the super foundation with sugar water/dilute honey

 

[Finman]

.
Muswell, that sugar trick is not real.
Foundations are never too old.

bees draw foundations, if they need then and they can occupye the space.

often colony does not draw combs if they have swarming in mind.

 

[Mike a]

You will struggle to melt set honey by standing the bucket in hot water unless you can keep topping up the hot water from a kettle for many hours. You need to heat to about 45C and it will take a long time to melt. I use a warming cabinet made from 50mm thick foil covered insulation from a builders' merchant heated with a 40W bulb. This set up will melt a 30lb bucket in about 24 hours but you must stir it once or twice during this period.

Thanks for the info, two questions though about your warming cabinet.

How much distance between the bulb and the bottom of the bucket and do you cover the bulb to force the heat out sideways or just let it go up?

 

[RoofTops]

The bucket sits on a couple of bits of 2 * 1 so the warm air can circulate underneath it. The bulb is not below the bucket but in the corner of the box and there is a small baffle made from the same insulation to prevent the bulb shining directly on the bucket. The honey is melted by the air circulating by convection. A little fan such as a CPU cooling fan might help but my system works fine without one.

The internal dimensions of the box are a 450mm cube.

 

[Mike a]

Cheers

 

[buzz lightyear]

Sick of OSR!

Bit of a moan (sorry guys):
My bees are on a fruit farm, lots of early pollen, great. But, just as the apple comes into blosom, so does the OSR!
Not much anyone can do about that, but they fill the BB with the stuff, it granulates and then the frames are no good.
Would love to know how others deal with this, me I'm sick of having to replace frames due to this problem. and another thing, has anyone any experiance of swarming, comparing osr : non osr?
All I get from OSR is concreate frames and a load of nuc boxes due to swarm control. Oh......and a bit of honey.
My considerations for the future include:
Moving hives (last resort due to the pollination issue at the fruit farm)
Put up with it and just take out the granulated frames
Move to 12 by 14 in a hope for less swarming,

Your thoughts and ideas would be welcome.

Buzz

 

[skydragon]

Newby question... pls bear with me.

I've never really liked soft set (white) honey, preffering brown runny honey, the darker the better (I had some German beechwood honey recently that was almost black..yumeee).

Am I right in thinking OSR honey is not for me? (is white soft-set honey the only type of honey yielded from OSR?)

 

[oliver90owner]

Is this the texture/liquidity characteristics you are comparing ; or is it the colour? Frankly, I would not be able to taste the colour.

I suggest you try some, or not, and make up your own mind.

White soft set honey is not the only type of honey yielded from OSR.

RAB

 

[Mike a]

post removed answered by oliver90owner

 

[Peter Cox]

is it old foundation in the super?, you could try spraying the super foundation with sugar water/dilute honey

Do you have an excluder under the supers. If so ditch it and spray the foundation with 1:1 sugar syrup, a drop of lemon grass oil in the sugar syrup might help too.

 

[mbc]

Bit of a moan (sorry guys):
My bees are on a fruit farm, lots of early pollen, great. But, just as the apple comes into blosom, so does the OSR!
Not much anyone can do about that, but they fill the BB with the stuff, it granulates and then the frames are no good.
Would love to know how others deal with this, me I'm sick of having to replace frames due to this problem. and another thing, has anyone any experiance of swarming, comparing osr : non osr?
All I get from OSR is concreate frames and a load of nuc boxes due to swarm control. Oh......and a bit of honey.
My considerations for the future include:
Moving hives (last resort due to the pollination issue at the fruit farm)
Put up with it and just take out the granulated frames
Move to 12 by 14 in a hope for less swarming,

Your thoughts and ideas would be welcome.

Buzz

Pile the supers high - many more than you'd expect them to fill with honey . To prosses the quantity of nectar that sometimes floods in from osr they need quite a volume of drawn comb ( drawn comb is 100x better than foundation for this purpose) the extra space should keep most of the nectar out of the brood nest alleviating swarming and solving the solid brood combs problem . One dissadvantage of this system is that sometimes the honey is chimneyed up the supers giving you more boxes to prosses for the same quantity of honey

 

[sahtlinurk]

i extracted my first load of OSR honey 2 weeks ago and i did not have any granulated or even close to granulating combs.. as all the fields close to me are now dieing off then probably next w/e will have my last OR honey to spin. It does set pretty hard in the jar quite quickly but that is how it is. Made some soft set honey as well but don't really like the white color of that.

cheers,
Lauri

 

[oliver90owner]

Close your eyes! Or have a sarnie rather than an open buttie!

Regards, RAB

 

[RoseCottage]

All,
there have been some very useful and some amusing comments in this thread and I took the early information and relayed it to my honey processing manager...

She took one look at the 5 large buckets of lard like honey and told me to forget it if I expected her to spend her days grinding by hand in our little pestle and mortar pounds and pounds of fine seeding. She also asked me how on earth I expected to extract source material from the rock hard stuff that had set in th buckets (her daughter suggested I might like to wear it until it melted!)

So any tips on the preparation of the seeding honey for 89lbs of soft set honey? What do you actually do? Chisel and Hammer, Blender, TNT?

Also, when it comes to re-setting into the super soft set honey of her dreams is it ok to take it down the pub and leave it in the walk in fridge for a night (around 2-5 degrees C)?

All the best,
Sam.

 

[Poly Hive]

Your issue seems to be no seed honey.

Look in the shops and buy some soft set honey produced in the UK so you can be reasonably confident it is disease free. As in no AFB spores.

Use that to seed your first batch and off you go, just remember to keep some back for future batches.

PH

 

[Jimmy]

This page here describes one approach to producing soft set honey that doesn't require a seed honey:

creaming osr honey

I haven't tried it yet but know others who have used it successfully. I will use it within the next week.

Screwfix sell paddle mixers very much cheaper than Thornes although they look like they are painted from the website image.
All the hand creamers I could find in the UK were aluminium which I thought was a no-no for processing honey.