Storing Honey

[Etton]

I store my jars of honey in a spare room with all the radiators turned off, so its always quite cold in there. Reading recent threads about granulation I am thinking its best to turn the radiators on so its as warm as the rest of the house. Hopefully to extend the life of the honey before granulation.
Perhaps store in the airing cupboard above the hot water cylinder?
Where do others store there jarred honey?

 

[enrico]

If they are going to granulate they will, in a warm room they will just take a couple not weeks longer. Don't bother wasting the heat!
E

 

[B+.]

I store my jars of honey in a spare room with all the radiators turned off, so its always quite cold in there.

I always thought that turning radiators off created a "cold sink" in your house and it was better to leave them on. This is definitely one for DerekM though.

 

[applejack33]

Storing honey

Think I read somewhere good temperature for storing honey to prolong staying liquid/ delay granulation is around 10c to12c. I keep a quantity of jarred product in my insulated warming cabinet in the bee workshop (shed), which at this time of year is about right and puts warmer to good use.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Perhaps store in the airing cupboard above the hot water cylinder?

Think, HMF.

 

[Curley]

Think I read somewhere good temperature for storing honey to prolong staying liquid/ delay granulation is around 10c to12c. I keep a quantity of jarred product in my insulated warming cabinet in the bee workshop (shed), which at this time of year is about right and puts warmer to good use.

The optimum temperature for crystallisation is 14c Long term storage should be aiming to be less than 10c - tricky in a centrally heated house.

I tend to store the honey in buckets and jar smaller batches(1 or 2 buckets) as required to meet shop orders and have a small stock at home for door step customers. Then the problem doesn't arise. Still have to warm up whole buckets but I think that is easier than rewarming(?) jars .
Depends on how much you have and how many customers I guess.

 

[Millet]

Try freezing it and take a jar out of the freezer as and when needed..

 

[buzz]

I read your post and thought you either have a very poorly insulated water cylinder in your airing cupboard or were having a larf Hivemaker!

But my searches on t'internet brought up this research from Brazil, which makes interesting reading:

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cagro/v36n2/09.pdf

EU limit of HMF in honey is 40mg/kg (page 205, left column)

From the results (graph on Page 206, table on page 207), it would apppear that even leaving the honey in the hive for 12 hours could increase the HMF levels four to fivefold, to 20 mg/kg, which seems unlikely.

But to put this into perspective, from a study publish in US national Library of Medicine:

"Unlike for honey, in the processing of other foodstuffs, comparatively higher temperatures (during baking, roasting), longer duration times, and different additives are required, which profoundly affect the HMF content in the foods. For example, cookies baked at high temperature contain 10–100 times more HMF (167.4–1100.1 mg/kg) than cookies baked at 200 °C (9.9–39.6 mg/kg) [10]. Fresh cookies baked at 300 °C and with saccharose added during processing have been reported to contain as much as 1100 mg/kg HMF"

"In another study, a sugar solution containing 30–150 mg/kg of HMF was used to feed honey bees and was found to cause 15–58.7% of deaths of caged bees within 20 days"

Confused...... I am

 

[Hivemaker.]

I read your post and thought you either have a very poorly insulated water cylinder in your airing cupboard or were having a larf Hivemaker!

But my searches on t'internet brought up this research from Brazil, which makes interesting reading:

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cagro/v36n2/09.pdf

EU limit of HMF in honey is 40mg/kg (page 205, left column)

From the results (graph on Page 206, table on page 207), it would apppear that even leaving the honey in the hive for 12 hours could increase the HMF levels four to fivefold, to 20 mg/kg, which seems unlikely.

But to put this into perspective, from a study publish in US national Library of Medicine:

"Unlike for honey, in the processing of other foodstuffs, comparatively higher temperatures (during baking, roasting), longer duration times, and different additives are required, which profoundly affect the HMF content in the foods. For example, cookies baked at high temperature contain 10–100 times more HMF (167.4–1100.1 mg/kg) than cookies baked at 200 °C (9.9–39.6 mg/kg) [10]. Fresh cookies baked at 300 °C and with saccharose added during processing have been reported to contain as much as 1100 mg/kg HMF"

"In another study, a sugar solution containing 30–150 mg/kg of HMF was used to feed honey bees and was found to cause 15–58.7% of deaths of caged bees within 20 days"

Confused...... I am

HMF is not a problem for us, many other foods have high HMF, but it is toxic to bees if too high.
Many honey packers test honey for HMF to see if it has been over heated or adulterated, there are limits to the HMF allowed.

From the chart in the link below you can see the way HFM can rise in honey warmed over a long period, low heat, compared to honey heated to high temperature over a short period......
https://www.airborne.co.nz/hmf.shtml