Ugli Honey

Jeff and I harvested three frames of honey from the original Lenox Pointe over the weekend.  I crushed and strained the total of 8 frames that we took on Sunday.  Some of the honey was very strange.

Here's what the cappings looked like.  Instead of individual cells being capped, the bees indulged in this stained glass approach.  The honey was a dark orange.



The frame below is what a whole frame looked like - it's all disorganized and the cappings on all three frames had this modern art look.



Inside the cells some of the honey was crystallized!  The grains of the crystals were large and rough against the roof of my mouth.   The honey tasted a little like apricot with a sharp finish at the last minute.  I've never tasted anything like it.  The moisture level on the refractometer was right at 18.6.



Here's a view of the cut side of one of the combs.  See the thickened crystal?

These bees are all overwintered hives so we didn't feed them this year at all.  I wondered if this were honey that was the result of the bees visiting a hummingbird feeder, but with three full frames (and we left the other five in the super because they weren't capped yet), that would be a lot of sugar syrup.

What nectar could these bees have gathered that would crystallize in the comb?  And we've had very hot weather in Atlanta - about a week of days with temperatures over 100 in the last couple of weeks.

Any ideas?

Crystallized Honey (Creamed Honey)

Honey lasts a long time. It's been found in tombs, still in good shape. However, under certain conditions honey will crystallize. My understanding is that the crystallization happens when there are tiny particles in the honey that act as seeds for the formation of the crystals and when the temperature is around 57 degrees F.

All honey doesn't crystallize but some of my favorite harvest bottles from this year did just that. I went out of town for a week and left my thermostat on 55 to save on heating. When I returned my favorite honey had become creamed honey.

When people make creamed honey on purpose their goal is to have a very smooth creamed product. The seed grains in this honey must have been perfect because the honey was smooth and perfectly creamy. Or, as my bias would lean, my method of harvest without an extractor may result in only the tiniest grains coming through the filter.

However, at this point in the year, most of my harvest from 2008 is gone and we love honey at my house. This morning I decided to take one of the last non-chunk jars of honey and reliquify it. To do this, you have to heat the honey.

Part of what I value in my harvest methods is that the honey is never heated - the hottest it has ever been is the interior temperature of the hive. But to re-liquify the honey you have to get it to 160 degrees and keep it there for a minute or so before turning off the heat.

I put the creamed honey in a pan of boiling water. I put a candy thermometer in the honey so I could monitor the temperature.



As the temperature rose, the honey became clearer.



At the end of the process, the entire bottle was again liquid honey. Because I got it to 160 degrees, it won't recrystallize. What we lost in flavor from heating the honey is worth it to me to have the liquid again.



I also have some jars of chunk honey (comb in a jar filled with liquid honey) where the liquid part of the honey has crystallized. I can't imagine that this process would work for the chunk honey because the wax would melt.