capped honey and water

[randydrivesabus]

last night i went to the beekeeper club meeting and after all the stupidity about how the list serve is used and abused (some people think its a great effort to hit that delete button) there was a discussion about when to take honey off and the 18% moisture content. the comment was made that if you have a jar of honey that was from a capped frame and you add a drop of water to it it will ferment. now this did not sound right to me but i had no way to present proof otherwise. anyone have experience with this happening?

[Bill W.]

Well, let's do the math.

A drop of water is generally accepted to be about .25mL.  A quart jar contains 946mL.

This is about a .025% difference in the amount of water.

A pint is about half a quart, so if we are talking about a pint jar, the percent difference is about .05%.

I don't think I'll be attempting any mead-making by adding a drop of water to my honey.  ;)

[Scadsobees]

I suppose it is probably true.. although I haven't tried it on purpose I think occasionally there was a little water left from washing the jars when I filled them.  I have never had honey ferment accidentally (I've made mead).  Although I did have a little sugar syrup left in a container that a year later was vinegar.

If you were to add a drop of water to the top of a jar, it wouldn't mix with the honey due to the thickness, and that little area would (for a while at least) have a higher water concentration, and that could start fermenting.  Eventually it would even out due to some water concentration physics law that I can't think of right off hand.

I don't think that it would take a whole lot of fermentation to make the honey taste funny.

Either way, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[randydrivesabus]

i'm pretty sure we've filled jars that had a small amount of water left from washing with no consequence as you have scads. ha! i would have liked to have said something like you did there bill. i was just thinking of how big a deal some people made of this last night with exploding jars, etc. i hate when so called experts mislead those trying to learn.

[KONASDAD]

I entered my honey in a honey contes. As part of contest, all honies were tested for moisture. they had to be between 18% and 15.25% or disqaulified. Mine was 15.5%, most were about 16%. So a drop of water would have even less impact if your below 18%.