Food Grade Gear - Necessary or Not

[beek4018]

I'm curious to know whether "food grade" buckets and storage containers are necessary for honey storage and processing, etc.

I'm sure they are a good idea.

I ordered some equipment from a company that includes a 5-gal. bucket that looks suspiciously like the white 5-gal bucket sold at every hardware store in America.  Their catalog calls it a 5-gal. pail and makes no mention of food grade quality.  When I called to check they, of course,said "oh yeah ours is food grade, and you've gotta use food grade only. So don't by it from Home Depot, buy it from us."

If honey is mostly sugar, and bacterially safe, why use food grade, etc.?

I'm curious to know what everyone else does, uses, and has experienced.

Thanks.

[rast]

 I do use food grade buckets and lids that I get from the bakery dept at a grocery store.

[iddee]

We used galvanized extractors for many, many years. Now they are all stainless because galvanized is too dangerous. GO FIGURE !

I guess they make more money on the stainless ones.

[AllenF]

When I was young, I remember my mom letting us play with a jar of mercury on the kitchen table.   Making balls of it and pushing it around.   And it was ok then too.   I would go the extra and get all food grade.  Just cover yourself. 

And if anyone has a jug of mercury that they want to give away...... I would like to show my kid the fun I use to have.

[Scadsobees]

I'm with rast.  Talk to a few local bakeries.  Shoot, just from one bakery I got as many as I need and more.  Smell of vanilla fades quickly and you can get the lids and stuff too.  I find the handles are good on them too.  The downside is that the size may not be so consistent...some 3 gal, 4 gallon, etc.  But I can deal with a lot of inconvenience for free.

[CAHighwind]

The whole "food grade" thing with the buckets isn't about bacteria, it's about that ever popular "Green" business about some plastics leeching the ever ubiquitous "chemicals" into what is held inside.  They decided in the last 10 years that we were all going to get cancer from plastics... just like everything else in the universe.  But heck, free from the bakery takes care of that issue and the whole fact that we, as beekeepers, are all out of money because, ya know... we're bee keepers and thousands of children are not cheap!  :-D

[Culley]

We used galvanized extractors for many, many years. Now they are all stainless because galvanized is too dangerous.

:shock:
I think mine is galvanized. It's definitely not stainless. Is this a serious issue?

[VolunteerK9]

When I was young, I remember my mom letting us play with a jar of mercury on the kitchen table.   Making balls of it and pushing it around.   And it was ok then too.   I would go the extra and get all food grade.  Just cover yourself. 

And if anyone has a jug of mercury that they want to give away...... I would like to show my kid the fun I use to have.

Find you some of the old sliding rocker type a/c thermostats. They have a mercury filled switch in there that you can rob of a little blob of mercury.

[alfred]

If you want you can put a coat of Camcoat on your galvanized gear and it will then be nonreactive.

[iddee]

If galvanized is reactive, why didn't it kill all the beeks over the last hundred years that used it?

[alfred]

Don't Know, all I know is that if you want your galvanized gear to pass health code it must be coated or replaced with stainless.

[AllenF]

If galvanized is reactive, why didn't it kill all the beeks over the last hundred years that used it?

Ain't most of the dead now?

[iddee]

Yeah, but they didn't die from the galvanized metal.

[buzzbee]

I am not a plastics expert,but as far as food grade,I think the plastic is less permeated by oxygen and the outside atmosphere compared to conventional plastics. It is also more carefully scrutinized when made from recycled material. EG:
food grade buckets are probably not made from recycled antifreeze or oil jugs.

[FRAMEshift]

Yeah, but they didn't die from the galvanized metal.

Well, at least not all of them.  :-D  What did those others die from?

[hardwood]

Bee stings.

Scott

[Hethen57]

The bakery route sounds easy if you can do it, but consider the cost of your time to drive around to find one, then schmoose whoever is working there to get them to let you have one, then if it has any flavor residue, it is really hard to get out and you will spend alot of time cleaning and soaking (and most smells never come out, or they go away and come back)....or you could go to HD and pay $3 (another $1 for a lid) and have a bucket almost ready to go...they are #2 (which I'm pretty sure is ok) and if you are only crushing and straining, or bottling out of it, the honey really isn't sitting in there that long anyway.  I think that is one of the more miniscule health risks that I am exposed to on a daily basis.

[AllenF]

You can get a bucket and lid from most of the bee suppliers for 7 bucks and you know that they are food grade.