>I looked around for a good way to calibrate, as you can't calibrate with
water since the scale is too high.

"I haven't tried, but it would be very easy if you have an accurate scale to
make up a 17% sugar solution and see if the instrument reads it correctly."

It is not quite that easy.  At 25 deg C sugar only has a solubility of 68% in water.  Plus a sugar solution would not have the same refractive index as honey even if both had the same % solids.  They would be close but not identical.  There are some methods that use olive oil I found on the net that can give a reasonable approximation if your refractometer has a wide enough range.  Best would be to test some honey with your refractometer and with one that you feel is correctly calibrated and compare.  Remember that refractive index is fairly strongly influenced by temperature also.  So, you need to have a refractometer that has temperature correction built in or you need to always test at the same temp.

Dick

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