>You are stepping into one of the most hotly-debated areas in all ofbeekeeping, because nearly everyone feels that they have an intuitive grasp/mastery of the subject of "airflow" and "evaporation". 

From the Honey Ripening topic, quote of Cody Thompson’s MSc Thesis (not peer reviewed): 

>This is a significant simplification since the process of honey ripening involves the evaporation of water from the dilute nectar. […] By the time nectar has condensed into honey, it has given up a large volume of water to the hive environment. […] Honeybees have been shown to express preference for hive humidty around 75% [sic] [8], while the constant flux of moisture from the nectar stores work to increase hive humidity. Therefore excess moisture from the honey ripening process must be expelled through passive and/or active ventilation to maintain the desired set point.

I think the chap who wrote the above paragraph may have misunderstood the hygroscopic nature of honey himself. It appears he was thinking about the process of drying honey as being akin to the process of a drying clothes in a dryer, for example, which is incorrect. Honey just kind of oozes along with whatever moisture content its environment happens to be. I saw him present these modeling results at a conference back when he was working on this. He was an impressive modeller and it was a good presentation but I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know honey is hygroscopic. 

To get back to the original post, I wouldn’t assume slow capping is necessarily related to high humidity; sometimes bees will cap high moisture honey and sometimes they’ll leave dry honey uncapped. Other issues could be they had too much space, weren’t on a strong enough nectar flow, the bees “aged out” and weren’t interested in producing wax anymore, or sometimes if there’s something wrong with the bees they won’t be as good about capping honey. 

I'd also be careful about assuming a relationship between air flow and honey drying time, for the same reasons James Fischer already mentioned. 

If you’re trying to produce comb honey, my only suggestion would be to keep the hive as “tight” as you can, meaning don’t give the bees even a hint of extra space. Tend towards swarming levels of overcrowding in your hive without quite reaching that point. It’s pretty standard to do that for comb honey production anyway but maybe even more important in your case.

You could also try and rig up some new fangled high-humidity hive design that functions as a honey super desiccator. I think you'd need to use a substance that is more hygroscopic than honey? 

Tracey

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html