Just pulled some cabbage palm which always comes in with high moisture, this time it's at 19.75% which is a little lower than normal but still not good enough so I'm trying a new approach to dry it down. I've tried stacking the boxes and running a fan on them along with a dehumidifier in a closed air conditioned room with limited success. This time I've added puncturing the caps with one of those cute little spiked rollers gizmos so I'm not trying to pull the moisture out through the closed caps. So far it seems to be working, dropped the moisture from 19.75% to 19% in about six hours. I'm only drying four shallow boxes this time but it seems to be working better than anything I've tried before. Getting the moisture down to an acceptable level has always been a challenge here in N.E. Florida during August no matter how many boxes I've harvested. Going to let everything run overnight and see if it worked.
I have never had cabbage palm honey. Where on the chart from 1-10 would you place it in comparison to clover honey?
Ben, It's hard to explain, CP honey is sweet but ends with a tangy flavor. Clover honey is a lot sweeter than any of the palm honeys I get over here in N.E. Florida and has a floral finish along with a clear flavor. CP starts sweet with a tangy background that continues till the finish then ends with a zing, I like it just because it comes from my hives and it's a little different but it's nowhere close to clover. The biggest problem with it is the moisture content which I've seen at above 20%. Most honey producers don't like it because of high moisture content. I was making mead with it but had to stop, ended up drinking more and enjoying it less which meant it was time to turn a corner in my life style.
Getting the moisture level down to 18% has always been a problem when I harvest any honey during the summer, it just seems cabbage palm comes in a lot higher than the others.
I have never had the need to dry honey, so no experience here. But I do recall seeing an article many years ago (bee culture?) of a home made honey drier from a 5 gallon bucket. It was basically used an aquarium air pump to put air at the bottom of a PVC pipe inserted vertically in the bucket creating like a bubbler used in hydroponics. the cover had holes in it to allow the honey to drain back down into the bucket. The principle was to get as much honey exposed to the air by both the air bubbles and the surface area exposed on the bucket lid before draining back down. The whole setup was kept in a closet with a dehumidifier. I believe it had pretty fast results (otherwise there wouldn't have been an article I suppose) Seems to me drying might be easier after extracting, no?
Just thinking outside the box, but one of those chocolate fountain towers might work too.
So far the drying is working better than I expected. The moisture content has gone down from 19.75% to 17.50% in under 24 hours. From previous attempts I have found that the more air across the frames the better and breaking the caps this time exposed a whole lot more surface area to the air flow facilitating rapid moisture removal.
The setup is simple, a stack of supers sitting on 2x4's filled with the frames that have had their caps punctured. I have a full sheet cake tray under everything to catch the drips. On top is an empty box that acts as a plenum for the box fan set on high that is pulling air up through the stack. I have the dehumidifier sitting next to the stack with the output blowing at the gap under the supers to help pull dry air up into the stack. It's pretty basic and seems to be working better than anything I've tried before.
This was interesting, I checked the moisture levels during extraction and it looks like only the top and bottom frames in the stack had their moisture content lowered. The frames in the center boxes still had a high moisture. Oh well you learn by your mistakes and I'm still learning. LOL
I stack them crisscross pattern 5 high doing the same as you with the dehumidifier and fan for 4 to 5 days rotating the boxes each day. Works fairly well.
Barhopper said "I stack them crisscross pattern 5 high doing the same as you with the dehumidifier and fan for 4 to 5 days rotating the boxes each day. Works fairly well." I'm a little worried about small hive beetles moving over the 4 or 5 days it would take doing that which is why I only gave it one day before extracting.
I think I'm trying to rush the drying, didn't wait long enough before extracting and the room I had the dehumidifier set up in wasn't very air tight. Trying a small fan blowing down into the buckets while sitting in an extra bathroom room with the house AC running next. I've found that I need to stir the honey every hour or so as it drys.
Spent some time cleaning up after extraction, the girls had the extractor completely cleaned of honey in only four or five hours. Stacked the wet supers on the hives to keep robbing down.
I should have said that we put the supers in the freezer for a couple days minimum before extracting. I?ve go 2 big chest freezers for bee equipment so we put it in those until we have enough to extract usually a minimum of 10 supers.
Being in Hawaii, the naturally high humidity causes most of our honey harvested to be too high in moisture content straight from the hive much of the time. I picked up a used proofing cabinet (though a warming cabinet would suffice) from a closing restaurant.
For small harvests (a single hive or two) and extractions/removals, after I extract the honey, I test every batch on a digital refractometer to determine moisture content. If it's too high in moisture for bottling, I distribute the honey into a thin layer on multiple baking pans to maximize the surface area so it extracts the moisture much quicker. Usually 8-16 hours of cabinet time renders the honey from 20-22% to below 18% in my case.
For larger harvests, removing all racks allows supers to be stacked (I recommend perpendicular or diagonal to each other for improved circulation and quicker work) and the cabinet will do it's magic. Be sure to have a pan on the bottom as some honey will trickle down and would make cleanup a chore.
The cabinet has a heating element on the bottom along with a fan to circulate the air in the cabinet quickly. Works wonderfully and since it's thermostat controlled I leave it set to 102 and forget it. However, for the small batch method, it's important to not store the honey on the baking sheet for extended periods as the honey will eventually react to the aluminum if left on them for extended periods. 1-2 days is not a problem...just don't leave it for weeks or months.
This is not the cheapest method to get started with as used cabinets still run upwards of $500 or so, but I find it especially effective and efficient than the humidifier method for the smaller harvests that I do (and removals). It's also quite a bit cheaper to operate than a dehumidifier when electricity is $0.31/kWh (nearly triple the national average) as the thermostat regulates and cycles the system so the heating element isn't always on.
JurassicApiary, thanks for the information, so far drying the honey with a fan hasn't worked. The honey has stayed at 19% for both buckets after three days of air drying with a fan. There's not enough surface area for effective moisture removal. Going to try an aquarium aerator along with the fan next. One thing I noticed was that the honey sitting on the spoon that I stirred the buckets with dropped down to 17% over night so it should work as long as I can get a larger surface area. I'm hoping that the aerator will work, it's a simple solution and beats building or finding a drying cabinet.
In the next few months I'm going to be looking in the local thrift stores for turkey roasting pans which I think would work great. Plan to borrow my wife's roasting pan first for a "dry" run to see if it works. LOL
Quote from: Beeboy01 on August 16, 2021, 08:22:05 PM
JurassicApiary, thanks for the information, so far drying the honey with a fan hasn't worked. The honey has stayed at 19% for both buckets after three days of air drying with a fan. There's not enough surface area for effective moisture removal. Going to try an aquarium aerator along with the fan next. One thing I noticed was that the honey sitting on the spoon that I stirred the buckets with dropped down to 17% over night so it should work as long as I can get a larger surface area. I'm hoping that the aerator will work, it's a simple solution and beats building or finding a drying cabinet.
In the next few months I'm going to be looking in the local thrift stores for turkey roasting pans which I think would work great. Plan to borrow my wife's roasting pan first for a "dry" run to see if it works. LOL
Turkey pans or the like usually have bottoms with ridges and things that make cleaning up and getting every last drop of honey back near impossible. Plus they bend and just get worse with re-use. I picked up a dozen large baking sheets (commercial, rigid type) for about $10 ea. from a restaurant supply company in town--they're probably cheaper in your area. Flat, smooth bottom and lots of surface area...and super easy to scrape with the flat side of a bucket scraper.
Indeed, maximizing surface area is key to quick moisture reduction along with something to remove the moisture from the air (e.g. dehydrator or heating element) or the like so the air can continue to absorb moisture from the honey. The more compact the enclosure, the more efficient the process will be. As such, using rooms takes longer vs a cabinet.
Best of luck to you!
I've been using the full sized aluminum cake sheets for years to catch drips. Currently have three which I found at flea markets and yard sales. A box fits on them like it was made for it and they can be used as an emergency lid when working out in the yard. I can see where they would work great in a drying cabinet but getting a complete set up would be more than I have in my bee keeping budget. Got to be careful, getting more equipment doesn't make the job easier, it just gives a reason to get more hives to utilize the new toys.
The fish tank aerator came in today so I'm give it a try. In theory it should work but it will take some time to find out if it does.
Here's a quick update on using a fish tank aerator for drying a bucket of honey. So far it has worked (Happy Dance) the moisture content has dropped from 19% to 18.4% in about a day and a half. I'm using an aerator for a 50 to 100 gallon tank with twin outputs and have one line in each bucket. Both buckets have dropped their moisture content by about 0.6% . I still have a fan blowing down into the buckets as a little extra help. The honey gets a layer of bubbles forming after about a hour which gets stirred back into the honey before checking the moisture content.
When I first turned on the aerator there was no real change in the moisture content for about 12 hours then it began to drop. So far I gotta say it's the best $15.00 I've spent on bee keeping equipment in a while.
Going to push it a little and see if I can get the moisture content down to 18% or lower over the next few days.