Getting the honey out of the comb

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Getting the bees out of the supers is the job before this one. This page starts with full supers in the kitchen.

The number that decides everything

Honey put on the market must contain no more than 20% water. Heather (Calluna) honey is allowed up to 23%. 1

That single figure drives most of what follows. Too wet and it is not honey in law, and it will ferment in the jar whatever you do afterwards.

Two other limits from the same schedule are worth knowing:

• Water-insoluble matter no more than 0.1 g per 100 g. Pressed honey is allowed 0.5 g, because pressing inevitably carries more wax through.
• HMF no more than 40 mg/kg. HMF rises with heat and with age, so it is the number that catches honey which has been cooked.

Honey must also not have begun to ferment, and must not have been heated so that the natural enzymes are destroyed.

“Begun to ferment” is past tense

This is the part that surprises people. If a batch has started to ferment, heating it to kill the yeast does not turn it back into honey. It has begun to ferment, and that is now a fact about it. What it may be sold as is baker’s honey, which has to be named that and labelled “intended for cooking only” next to the name. 1

So the moisture check is not a formality you do at the end. It decides what you are allowed to call the contents of the bucket.

Measuring the water

You need a refractometer with a water-in-honey scale, reading 10 to 30% water. On one common UK instrument that is a scale of its own, marked in steps of 0.2%, and it carries a different order code from the Brix scales the same maker sells. 3

Water content is read from refractive index at a reference temperature of 20 °C. To give two points off the reference table: a refractive index of 1.4915 is 18.0% water, and 1.4865 is 20.0%. 2 Your instrument does that conversion for you.

Three practical points from the reference method:

• The sample must have no crystals in it. Crystals are almost pure sugar, so a crystallised sample reads the liquid around them and tells you the wrong thing.
• Do not stir air into the sample.
• Keep the instrument in calibration. The method has the refractometer calibrated regularly with distilled water or with another certified reference material.

Which of those two you use depends on the scale. The maker of one common UK instrument gives one calibration method for the low range scales, which are zeroed on distilled water, and another for the high range scales, which cannot read water and are set with a certified reference material instead. Use the method your own guide gives for your own scale. 4

Temperature will lie to you

This is the mistake that matters, because it can move you across the legal line without you touching the honey.

Correct the refractive index by 0.00023 per degree away from 20 °C: add above, subtract below. 2 In plain terms, from the maker’s own correction table for one common UK instrument: a reading of 18.0% taken at 30 °C is really 17.1%, and the same 18.0% taken at 10 °C is really 18.9%. A reading of 20.0% at 30 °C is really 19.1%. 4

That last one is the difference between a jar you can sell and one you cannot. Use the correction table that came with your own instrument, or let it come to 20 °C first.

Do not read more into the decimal places than they can carry either. In the International Honey Commission’s own trial, two readings of the same honey in the same lab differed by up to about 0.15 percentage points of water, and between labs by up to about 0.68. A reading of 19.9% is not a comfortable pass.

Uncapping

Take the cappings off both sides over a tray. A cold uncapping knife or a serrated bread knife works; so does an uncapping fork for the low patches the knife misses. Heated knives are quicker and easier to overdo.

Frames that are only part capped are the judgement call. Bees cap honey when they have finished drying it, so uncapped cells are usually the wet ones. If a frame is largely uncapped, either put it back or keep it separate and measure that batch on its own.

The old shake test is still useful: hold a frame horizontally and give it a firm shake over the box. If nectar sprays out, it is not ready.

Three ways to get it out, and what the law calls them

The regulations actually name honey by how it came out of the comb: 5

• Extracted honey is spun out of uncapped combs in a centrifuge.
• Drained honey is drained out of uncapped combs.
• Pressed honey is pressed out, with or without moderate heat not exceeding 45 °C.

All three may be sold under the plain name honey. You do not have to own an extractor to sell honey legally.

A tangential extractor holds frames with one face outward, so you spin one side, turn the frames and spin the other. It is cheaper and it is kinder to new comb. A radial holds frames like spokes and empties both sides at once, so it is faster and needs no handling in the middle, but it asks more of the comb.

Start slow in either. New comb thrown at full speed blows out of the frame, and then you have lost the comb as well as the time.

Crush and strain needs no machine at all. You cut the comb out, crush it, and let it drain through a sieve. You lose the drawn comb, which is the real cost, but it is the right answer for one or two colonies and for foundationless frames.

Straining, settling, and a word called “filtered”

Strain the honey to take out wax and bits, then let it settle in a tank so the fine air bubbles rise. The reference sampling method uses a 0.5 mm stainless steel sieve, which is a reasonable guide to coarseness for a domestic straining cloth or sieve. 2

Settling takes a day or two. Skim the froth off the top before you jar. Warmth helps honey move through a strainer, and cold honey will barely move at all.

One thing to avoid doing by accident. Filtered honey is a legal category, and it means honey filtered so finely that the pollen is significantly removed. It must be labelled “filtered honey”, and once it is, you may not make any claim about its floral or regional origin. 6 Ordinary straining through a sieve or a coarse cloth is nowhere near that, so this is not a trap for most people. It is a reason not to reach for the finest filter you can find, and a reason your local honey keeps its local pollen.

Northern Ireland is removing the filtered honey category from 14 June 2026. England, Wales and Scotland have not. 7

Heat

Heat is how honey gets ruined slowly and invisibly. It drives HMF up and enzyme activity down, and both are measured against limits. 1

Warm honey to move it, not to change it. Warm the room, or warm the bucket gently and slowly. The pressed honey definition puts 45 °C on the face of the law as the ceiling for “moderate heat”, which is a sensible number to keep in your head. 5 The reference method softens a hard crystallised sample at no more than 40 °C. 2

There is no upside to going hotter. Nothing you gain in flow is worth the numbers you lose.

Fermentation

Honey ferments because of osmophilic yeasts, which are naturally present in honey, in nectar, in hives and in dust. 8 You cannot exclude them. You control the water instead.

The classic American work on this sets out bands: below 17.1% water honey will not ferment within a year whatever the yeast count; from 17.1 to 18.0% it is safe at low yeast counts; from 18.1 to 19.0% only at very low counts; and above 19% it can ferment on almost nothing. 9 That is a 1980 handbook and not a UK legal standard, but the direction of travel is sound, and the FAO makes the same point more cautiously: below 18% there is little probability of fermentation, and even below 17.1% the risk cannot be completely excluded.

Two things follow that people find counter-intuitive:

• Crystallising honey gets riskier, not safer. The crystals are sugar, so the liquid left around them is wetter than the honey was. A part set bucket is the one to watch.
• Cold storage helps and warm storage does not. Wet honey will not ferment much below about 10 °C, and drier honey will happily ferment at about 16 °C.

A fermenting bucket smells of sweet wine or fermenting fruit, foams at the surface, and can push its own lid off.

How long it all takes

For a few supers in a kitchen, plan a whole day and an evening the next day. Uncapping is the slow part. Extracting is quick. Straining and settling is a wait rather than work, and jarring is another session.

Do it the same day the supers come off if you can. Warm honey runs and cold honey does not, and a stack of supers left in a shed picks up moisture from the air.

Then the wet supers want dealing with straight away: Cleaning, freezing and storing supers.

Before you sell any of it

Labels, registration, weights and the withdrawal period after a treatment are a separate job with their own rules. Selling honey in the UK covers them.

The short version

• 20% water, or 23% for heather. Measure it, do not guess it.
• Correct the reading for temperature, or it can move you across the line.
• Extracted, drained and pressed may all just be called honey.
• Start the extractor slowly, especially on new comb.
• Strain coarsely. Fine filtering makes it “filtered honey” in law.
• Keep it under about 45 °C, and there is no reason to go near that.
• Once it has begun to ferment it is baker’s honey, and heating will not undo that.