r/Beekeeping Wiki

Honey Moisture

Honey is a hydrophilic substance. It very much wants to absorb water. Bees spend countless hours evaporating water out of honey. When they have properly cured it, the resulting product is acidic and very low moisture. This makes it inhospitable to growth of fungus, yeast and bacteria.

Target Moisture

A good target moisture is right around 18% water. For the most part, capped honey will be right around that level. Refer to rules of thumb on honey moisture for more information on when this is not true and how to measure it.

My honey is too wet!

If you live in a humid environment, it is quite possible you will end up with honey that is higher than 18%. If it is only slightly higher, it is likely fine. Honey generally is stable up to 18.5% moisture. Higher than that, it will eventually ferment. The higher it is, the quicker this will take place. Nectar source can make a difference. Some nectar souces ferment more quickly than others. And some honey will have a higher natural yeast content.

If your honey is too wet, do not panic.

I have not extracted yet

Perfect! It is much easier to fix moisture problems with honey while it is still in the comb. Combs are perfectly designed by bees for drying honey. They hold a very small amount of honey and are very shallow. It is much easier to extract excess water.

• Include uncapped honey in your harvest. This goes against everything everyone has ever told you. But it can be very key to getting your honey dry.
• Stack your supers in a very small room. A closet may be ideal. Place a couple of boards under the supers so that there is good air flow.
• Place a box fan on top of the stack of supers and turn it on high.
• Place a dehumidifier in the room. Do not go cheap and buy a little one. Buy a large one that will pull gallons of water out of the air.
• Measure the moisture of the honey a couple of times a day. Measure it in several places to get a feel for the overall moisture. Measure both capped cells and uncapped cells and keep notes on them
• While you are testing honey, do keep an eye out for small hive beetles. Hive beetles can lay eggs in your supers that will hatch in about 3 days. Crush any and all beetles or larvae you see. They are enemy #1.
• Your capped honey will likely drop about 1% moisture over 2-3 days. This may be enough. Uncapped honey may start out very wet, but the moisture of uncapped honey will plummet. Your goal is to mentally estimate the amount of capped vs uncapped and the moisture contents of each. The uncapped honey will become very dry and when blended with the semi-wet capped honey, you can get it as dry as you want it to be.

Oh no. I have already extracted

Lesson learned. Next year, dry your honey before you extract. You can still improve the stability of your honey. There are multiple methods, all very similar.

• The goal is to place the honey in a very shallow pan. (Remember: the bees are doing it in a very shallow wax cell.) Suggestions here are a jelly roll pan or a shallow casserole dish. When you try to force it dry, you will mostly be drying the surface. Deep dishes can be deceiving. You may measure the moisture of the surface honey only to find the underlying honey is still very wet.
• Place the pans of honey into a food dehydrator and set the temperature to about 95F/35C ¹.
• Test the moisture of the honey often and stir to incorporate it downwards. This may take several days and you will likely have to do many, many batches.

This is a bit of a debatable topic, but if you are planning on selling/distributing your honey to people that believe this as absolute fact, it is much easier just to adhere to a temperature maximum that makes your customers happy.

1. This temperature is suggested as it is the approximate temperature inside a bee hive. Many suggest that honey’s delicate properties dimish and/or are destroyed around 110F/43C. ↩