I've got a nice crop of honey sitting on my hives right now but am in the middle of a humid rainy spell here in Florida. Being a little limited on my equipment I need to pull some honey to free up some supers. Any thoughts on how to dry up the honey crop? I've a dehumidifier and was thinking about running it in a closed room with a fan blowing air across the honey supers. Think this would work and how long should I run the dehumidifier.
The other option would be to wait for the weather to dry out but I'm thinking that it's going to stay hot and humid all summer.
Thanks
Beeboy,
Your best bet is to use your dehumidifier in a closed off room and after extracting the honey, put it in a bottling bucket, one with a valve in it, and allow the honey to very slowly drip from the bottling bucket to another bucket. Have it dripping from the highest point that you can get it to the bucket on the floor. Warm the honey as much as you can but no higher than 100 degrees. You may have to do it more than once. At 50% room humidity, I can get the honey 1/2% per drop session. With a dehumidifier, it may be more.
I have a 1 1/2 gallons of honey to dry right now that is at 20% and that is what I will have to do probably 4 times.
Do not leave the honey in the comb. All it takes is one female SHB in the stack to destroy all of your honey in 3 days from when you pulled the frames.
Jim
Quote from: sawdstmakr on May 29, 2018, 06:41:57 PM
Do not leave the honey in the comb. All it takes is one female SHB in the stack to destroy all of your honey in 3 days from when you pulled the frames.
Jim
I don't disagree but I read a study about SHB's. It basically stated that frames of honey did not trigger the beetle to lay eggs. It was the pollen that triggered them to lay. They had beetles survive on honey frames for 6 months (I think) without laying. I have kept boxes it my house for several days without any ill effects. I have found a couple beetles wandering around them when I got ready to extract them.
Cao,
I agree, my father in law had honey supers stacked for weeks and they were ok. Problem is that all it takes are a couple of cells of pollen in the comb for them to destroy the whole super. Once the eggs hatch the larvae go through the whole frame and destroy it.
Jim
Quote from: Beeboy01 on May 29, 2018, 05:37:00 PM
I've a dehumidifier and was thinking about running it in a closed room with a fan blowing air across the honey supers. Think this would work and how long should I run the dehumidifier.
I think a better choice is to extract and freeze the honey. Dry it in your dry season. Remember that honey is hygroscopic. It is more apt to take on moisture in your humid season. If the honey is capped it is probably already good and not need much drying. Trying to dry it in the capped state might take until winter anyway.
I heard somewhere of a study that even if the honey is capped off it'll still absorb moisture.
I have to retract my advice. I found this:
Start here...Moisture
Too much moisture in honey lowers quality
http://www.beeculture.com/processing-honey-a-closer-look/
I've tried to extract capped honey during the wet season before and have lost more than one crop because of high moisture content. I'm going to leave the supers on for right now and hope a dryer week comes in. If not I'll run the dehumidifier for two days with a fan blowing over the supers in a closed room, even capped honey will pick up moisture from the air and will release it in a dryer enviroment . Before I do that I'll check for SHB's.
going to rebuild some frames and add foundation during the wet so i can get caught up with equipment.
Thanks All
Spent the afternoon setting up a honey dehumidifier in a small room off the shop. It's nothing fancy, the bottom is just a shallow up on blocks and it has a second shallow for the top which is covered with an inner cover to help with air flow. I'll stack the full supers between the two empty supers. I opened the hole in the inner cover so a small computer cooling fan will sit on it. The plan is to run both the AC and a dehumidifier while pulling air up through the supers with the fan. I'll stuff a towel under the door to keep the humidity out and run the setup for a day. I'll check the moisture content of the honey during the day to see if it working.
Looks like there will be a break in the rain next week so I'm leaving the bees alone till then. I did a quick inspection two days ago and saw a lot of capped honey and no SHB's so running the dehumidifier for a day or two should be safe. I don't have any way to freeze the frames so need to extract them pretty quickly after pulling the boxes.
What if you can use a small heater blowing warm air into the room to expel the high
humidity? A small heater should do the trick on blowing warm air on the honey frames inside a
small room. Not sure if SHB will like the warm room though.
Beepro, thanks for the suggestion but summer in Florida is here with rain most afternoons and a humidity over 75% for most days. Warm moist air doesn't work, I've tried it before. The only effective way to dry honey right now is to run a dehumidifier in a closed space. As to heating the room, the dehumidifier will warm up the room as it runs which is pretty much in line with your suggestion.
Can you build a small box out of plywood in the room and install the dehumidifier in there? This way you
can just hand the honey frames inside the box for better efficiency. Oh, the box you can reuse it next season too.
Beepro, I was thinking about that, making a 4x8 foot plywood box for the supers and dehumidifier but have the room in the corner of my shop ready to go. It's only about 10 foot square with a 7 foot ceiling and is pretty much air tight. I've used it before without having a fan circulating air through the supers and it worked.
Instead of using a small computer cooling fan I'm thinking about just laying a regular box fan on the supers to get maximum air flow through them.
Quote from: Acebird on May 30, 2018, 08:55:47 AM
I have to retract my advice. I found this:
Start here...Moisture
Too much moisture in honey lowers quality
http://www.beeculture.com/processing-honey-a-closer-look/
Ace, great article, very detailed, thanks Buddy. Now I know what the small triangle on the bottom of my Honey bears means, along with pages and pages of useful info in the article. Also confirmed my freezing of Honey, is best storage method, assuming proper moisture content.
Blessings