Storing Honey and Extracted Frames Effectively

Tips for storing Honey

• Only bottle the amount you can sell in a reasonable amount of time. Depending on the time of year, you may only sell a few bottles a week or even a month. Avoid having cases of bottled honey sitting around crystallizing while waiting to be sold or consumed.
• Keeping excess honey in 5-gallon buckets in the warmest place in your home or garage will slow the crystallization process. If and when it begins to crystallize it’s relatively easy to transfer it to a double boiler and warm slightly to re-liquefy. Use a thermometer to avoid getting the honey over 120*. This will ensure you don’t degrade the honey’s beneficial properties.

“Did you know” that you want to avoid keeping honey in metal containers? Honey is hygroscopic which means it can absorb moisture and take on the odors of certain materials. Being that honey is acidic it can “degrade” the metal causing an even greater chance of capturing the metal taste in your honey.

Tips for storing extracted honey frames

• Return extracted honey supers to the colonies AT DUSK, allowing the bees to make quick work of cleaning every drop of honey out of those frames left over from extraction, leaving you with a nice clean “dry” frame to store. Caution: Returning supers during the day can start a robbing frenzy.
• Upright or Deep Freezer – this method works extremely well especially if your honey frames are still holding a bit of nectar or capped honey. Simply stand each frame in your freezer, and fill it up. Over 100 can fit in this chest freezer at a time. These will keep until next season with little to no intervention.
• Para-Moth – designed for this very use, is an industry-recognized method for storing honey frames.

By: Chari Elam

Watch this video as Blake shows us how!