Ivan McGill wrote:
>
> >When honey is ready for harvesting is a question of general interest and some
> >contorversy.   Here are some answers I have heard:
> >
> >1)   100% capped  (required for comb honey)
> >
> >2)    80% capped
> >
> >3)    Unable to manually shake nectar out of open cells
> >
> >4)    Whatever is in the supers at the end of the honeyflow.
> >
> >Personally, I try for 1) but usually end up at a combination of 2) and 3).
> >  Most years, my honey tests out < 17 % moisture.   Anything that's really
> >thin gets tested, and if its > 18.6 % moisture will get fed back to the bees
> >as soon as the flow is over.
> >
> >W. G. Miller
> >Gaithersburg, MD
>
> In the rainy season or if in doubt if the honey is not ripe enough I have a
> small dehumidifier which is used for 3 or 4 days if the supers are
> extremely wet. I have taken honey that is 18% down to 17%. I don't use it
> to ripen honey just to take the moisture down to an exceptable %. If you
> leave it on too long the honey gets very dry and hard to extract.
>
> IvanI keep bees in s.e.Kansas and it is usually quite warm and humid in
the fall when I do my extracting.  I usually extract in September.
Some years I have found the moisture content of the uncapped honey
to be lower than that of the capped honey.
I run a water jacketed sump tank that holds 20+ gallons of honey. This
unit puts out quite a lot of heat even though I only keep it at 100 deg.
It seems like every year my honey will tend to run a bit high on moisture
like in the range of 18-19% as brought in from the hive.
In order to keep the moistue down I run 2 small dehumidifiers.  This also
adds to the heat in the honey house so I installed a window air conditioner.
This unit also dehumidifies air in the honey house and makes the temperature
bearable to work in.
I will spend a day or two bringing in supers of honey,stack them on 2x4
boards and stagger them a bit in the stacks for ventilation and run a fan
to circulate the air.
Put this all together and my moisture content in the barrel is in the range
of 17.2 to 18.2%.
I have found the only reliable way to judge moisture content is to test it
with a refractometer.  Honey stored for a number of months must have a
moistue content of no more than 18.5%.  One bad barrel can pay the cost of
the refractometer.  If one beekeeper can not justify the cost maybe by
going in with several other beekeeping friends it could be justified.