Old Honey

[BeeJay]

Today I extracted 10 frames of honey from a hive that didn't make it throught the winter, is this honey still good? It sure taste fine :)

[reinbeau]

Ours is fine, but cloudy, I guess the goldenrod makes it cloudy.  Tastes jest fine!

[Mici]

hmmm, if you fed this hive in the autumn-for the winter of course, this honey actually isn't much of a honey, now is it :-\
if you didn't and there's an obvious reason for the die out of the colony-which is not, let's say pesticide related, then all should be ok.

[reinbeau]

Nope, we didn't feed, they had plenty of stores.  The warm/freeze cycle in January got them (extreme temp swing). 

[CWBees]

Honey does not go bad as far as I know. They have found honey in Egyptian tombs that was still good.

[BeeJay]

Yap I didn't feed them either and it taste great, a little water fell in the buckets because of rain, how can this affect the honey?

[Mici]

in the worst possible way.
water is almost the only substance that makes honey go bad.
honey is hydroscopis-it bonds water from the air, that is why it didn't go bad in egypt, well it didn't go bad because egypt is hot and dry.
one way for perservation is crystalization, it stops the honey being hydroscopic.

anyway, if your water content rose above 18% there's a possibility your honey will ferment.

how much water into how much honey? if you can borrow the refracto-meter, borrow it and measue, if the ammount of honey is small enough, try to use it up ASAP, and keep an eye on it.

[BeeJay]

Thanks

So I have  2.5 gallons of honey and a little water fell in it, hopefully no enought to harm it.