I work with gamma radiation on a daily basis. Because it is a wave similar
to light there is no such thing as "food grade".
Also, because it is free to me I routinely irradiate my equipment. In the
spring I irradiate my supers before putting them ion the hives. When I did
get SFB I burned the frames and then irradiated the boxes because I did not
want to have the AFB mess still in the frames, and it made the NYS inspector
happy. When I irradiate my equipment use a Cobalt 60 source for the
radiation, it has the best penetrating power of all of the sources we have,
and place a dosimeter on the opposite side of the equipment from the
radiation source to measure the amount of radiation is received through the
equipment. I irradiate the equipment until at least 5 rem (roentgen
equivalent man) has been received. I wont do boxes that have honey in the
frames because the honey will reduce the amount of radiation that will pass
through it.

As far as honey being edible after being irradiated, there are times when
people will leave there lunch near where we are using the radioactive
materials and they will come up to us and tell us about there lunch being in
the area and ask us if it is ok to eat. We then notify them that we will
have to confiscate there lunch and dispose of it properly, we are nice
enough to give them back there lunch bucket after we have disposed of there
lunch, we just hope that they left a good lunch for us to eat.

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