Capped and uncapped honey
We
headed to the hive Thursday to steal some honey, but ended up deciding
to wait another week. Although there's
plenty of honey present, I couldn't find a single
frame that was completely capped.
Capped honey can be
stored indefinitely since it's so low in moisture
that microorganisms can't get a foothold in the gooey goodness.
Uncapped honey, on the other hand, can host several yeasts that ferment
the honey, slowly turning the precious sweetener into mead. You
can get away with extracting frames with a bit of uncapped honey, but I
decided to play it safe.
The last week has been
cool and wet, so I'm not really surprised our
bees sat around playing poker instead of making and capping
honey. Hopefully next week we can take our borrowed extractor for
a spin.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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