Hello friends.

I have a question.  (I searched the archives using about 6 different
words and didn't find the answer to this one)

We have had 2 of our beekeepers experience the fermenting of honey, we
think.  Specifically, there is no mold growing or anything.  The smell,
in both instances, was one very similar to kerosene.

In the first instance, the beekeeper borrowed our extracting room and
used our refractometer.  Around 17 (we just have the cheapie model).
But the jar that we kept on our shelf of samples from all our newbie
member beekeepers, ended up with the most horrid smell.  (The honey
containers were kept in a window with no direct sun, but sunlight
reflecting.  This window looks onto the front covered porch.)  Well,
this honey container was a regular mason jar with a canning lid.  The
lid would pop in when the light was shining and then about an hour after
the sun went down the dimple would pop back up.  All the other jars
would show no action like this.  The guy only got about 6 quarts from
his hive that first year so ours was the only jar that was not eaten
immediately.  The percentage of capped cells was about 98% or better.

The second instance was not from our extracting room.  These guys had no
refractometer.  But their capped cells were about 100%.  This honey also
smelled just like kerosene and this happened in only about 3 weeks
time.  Well, this beekeeper didn't care what it smelled like, he was
gonna eat it.  Ate it for breakfast on his toast for at least 2 weeks.
He said it tasted fine, just didn't smell very good.  His wife said it
did not taste fine.  After about the 2 weeks he realized he had to run
to the bathroom just about 1 1/2 hours after eating his toast.  Finally
put it together that it was probably the honey.

Neither of the beekeepers let the frames sit for days, they pulled the
frames and then extracted the same day.

I did see some posts in my searches about honeydew and perhaps it could
cause the spoiling.  Was this ever looked into?  Does anyone know if
this may be the cause.  I guess that's 2 questions.

Does spoiled honey smell similar to kerosene.  Could there be something
that the bees work that would cause this spoilage.

Help?

Judy in Kentucky, USA