"I did some digging and can't find the science why capped honey would exchange moisture with the atmosphere, "

Those cappings are pretty thin wax.  Water will diffuse thru things you would not expect it to diffuse thru.  For example take a standard polyethylene bag that is a few mils thick and put some wetted peat moss in the bag and let it sit around three or four months in a dry place.  You will find the peat moss is bone dry as the water diffuses thru the plastic.  I used to raise some tropical fish whose eggs required long incubation times under slightly  moist conditions.  The fish laid the eggs in peat moss.  You squeezed out the excess water and put the whole thing in a standard plastic fish bag like pet stores use.  If you did not store those bags in something sealed reasonably tight like a small styrofoam box the peat would be bone dry in a couple of months and the eggs dead.  Even under those storage conditions you needed to check the bags every couple of weeks and mist some water on them if they started to get too dry.  Wax cappings on honey are if anything thinner than those plastic bags and probably have some porosity to boot.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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