Emergency food: honey

Just Picked Up 5 Pounds

We picked up 5 pounds of honey at Costco today. Since we now know that honey does not go bad, I can just keep on building my stockpile of honey without worrying about rotating/refreshing the stock.

 

Build a top bar beehive, and let nature and the bees do all the work. It is a process that needs very little interference from us. The only downside, is it doesn't get the honey yield, a larger traditional hive would, but it is a live and let live arrangement, and you are rewarded by the bees with a couple combs of natural goodness. The bees actually need most of the honey to get the hive through the winter, so you should only take what they don't use. You may have to artificially swarm the hive, and dust them with powdered sugar from tie to time (a treatment for the veroa mite), other than that, it is a natural process. You can catch your own swarm, by making the hive attractive for them, maybe even using a little pheromone attractant. I think a natural swarm would be more interesting than a purchased one.

 

I just had honeycomb sent to me from a real nice guy off ebay, Im hoping to purchase a lot of honey soon, and more comb!

 

I've known about the anti-bacterial properties of honey...or rather, I've read about it...never used it on a wound or anything.

However, although honey has anti-bacterial properties, it is recommended that you not feed honey to a child less than one. According to the CDC (my employer), honey may contain natural botulinum endospores, a bacteria. I guess the spore protects the bacteria...spore shells are tough.

Infant Botulism -- Massachusetts

The only reason I bring this up is that, let's say you've got 5-10 gallons of honey as your source of sweetener and something goes down where you have to use it and you've got a kid. Do you risk it??

I have a small child and we don't giver her honey because of this. It's just not worth it to me, although I think it's unlikely she'll get sick.

So...I'm just throwing that out there as an FYI.

 

do you ship?? thats an awesome price!! I need a 5 gallon bucket of it

 

Honey has medicinal & first aid value

We keep about a gallon on hand at all times (as well as a gallon of molasses). Honey has many healing qualities and can be used to treat sore throats, in elderberry syrup for coughs and yes, on wounds, too. And many other things I cannot think of right now.

I use raw honey only. It does crystalize. That's how I know it's the good stuff.

 

I absolutely adore raw honey. Here's a list of thing honey (especially raw honey), can cure or help with either by itself or mixed with something else, like cinnamon, or lemonade (Note, I shall put an asterisk next to the ones either I or a close friend/family member have experienced ourselves, and two asterisk next to something both I and a friend/family member have experienced ourselves.

Acne*
Arthritis*
Bad Breath**
Bladder Infections
Cholesterol
Colds**
Fatigue**
Heart Disease
Immune System**
Indigestion**
Influenza**
Longevity
Skin Infections*
Stomach Ache/nausea**
Toothache**

Bacterial Infections**
Fungal Infections** (such as athlete's foot. Note. Should be applied to the infected area topically)
Viral Infections**
Burns** (applied topically)
Infected wounds** (applied topically)
Cleaning wounds that haven't been infected yet** (applied topically)
Insomnia** (Mixed with preheated lemonade, and drunk, with or without cinnamon)
Coughing** (same as above)

Anxiety/nervous tension**
Pain relief** (mixed with preheated water, lemonade, or tea and drunk, with or without cinnamon)

 

I've still got about 4 wine bottles of meade left from some bathces I made 2 years ago... some straight honey meade aswell as some strawberry/honey meade. GREAT stuff. Few bottles of hard apple cider too...

 

I think the fact it crystalized isn't because it's raw, but because it has a low moisture content. You can add a limited amount of water to honey and still sell it, and it may be possable that bees fed sugar water produce a weaker (more watery) honey.

BTW, All honey is filtered to some degree, Otherwise you get little bee legs and such in the honey. When a neighbor put up comb honey in mason jars, it's still filtered honey poured arround the comb,

 

Our most recent use of raw honey was to treat a skin wound on our rooster. He got caught up in some twine and stripped (degloved) the skin on his leg. The vet gave us antibiotics for him but also recommended the application of raw honey to the wound. It seems that the crystals in the raw honey gives the skin a seed to grow on. He was totally healed up in about 3 months and you can't tell that there was ever a problem.

 

We are starting our own hives right now. Can't wait to start collecting this sweet Nectar!

 

A couple of questions - when you store honey long term is it best to purchase honey in glass or plastic? And wouldn't it be better to have smaller jars than a 5 gallon bucket to make heating some of the crystalized honey easier?

Anything else I should look for? I have a jar, but want to be sure I'm buying the best solution for storing.

Thanks!

 

Thanks Bruce - I'm guessing the 2# glass jars are much easier to handle than the bigger buckets.

 

We have a local honey farm. Since we are a self sufficient oriented town, we buy our honey in bulk when the family gives us a call and tells us they have the best batch of the season. Everything else gets blended, packaged, and sold. Wegmans is the only supermarket chain to sell them, the rest is mom and pop shops and Amish stores.
I get around 20 gallons a year. Most gets repackaged and put in preps.

 

For those having a hard time ordering bees this year, there are some videos on YouTube illustrating precisely how one can collect a wild honey bee hive. You have the benefit of a locally hardy strain. The trick is... finding the (accessible) hive. If it's inside of a wall, you may have trouble extracting it. If it's hanging from a tree, though, you're in luck.

Collecting a Wild Honeybee Swarm - YouTube

 

We purchase and store ours in 5 pound glass containers, from local keepers. Same as Bruce every few years we open one of the oldest and use it. No problems. Honey's shelf life is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Honey was used as a preservative in ancient times, as it has natural antibacterial properties.

Right now we have about 100 pounds of honey. We pour the honey from the larger "storage" jar into smaller, "everyday use" containers, like plastic 1# plastic "bear" containers. Heck of a lot easier to handle than a 5# jar when all you need is a little sweetener. De-crystallizing the honey in these is easy as well, a minute in the microwave, or a couple of minutes in very hot water, and you are - pardon the pun - golden.

 

I wish I could find a swarm of honeybees. The truth is, my father has been on this earth for over 60 years and has only ever seen a swarm once. I, of course, having been around a few less years, have never seen a swarm.

Maybe it's our location.

Maybe it's our climate.

If I ever do see a swarm, you can bet that I'll tag it.

 

Honey from my experience

I've been keeping bees for 15 years. There is no hard and fast rule about honey. Speed of chrystalization is based on the predominant nectar that was the base of the honey. Commercial bee keepers tend to rob the bees after they work over a certain area, so they can label their honey as orange blossom, cherry, or whatever. My honey is wildflower honey and is dark as tea or coffee and I still have some from 2003, that is pure honey and still hasn't chrystalized except a small layer in the bottom of the glass; where a bee keeper closer to the mesquite & guajillo areas of the state would produce very light colored honey more prone to chrystalize. Chrystalization has nothing to do with adulteration of honey (with sugar). It is true that honey is adulterated heavily if you buy non-US made honey. It is illegal to adulterate honey in the US and Canada which places beekeepers at a bad disadvantage here. Honey imported from China, Brazil and other foreign places (except Canada) will be between 20% and 80% cane or beet sugar. US origin honey is nectar with maybe a few traces of cane sugar from the winter feedings.

Honey is antiseptic. It's high osmotic pressure ruptures the cell wall of bacteria, hence the reason the Romans used it as a wound salve and it is still effective today. Only honey produced within a 20-50 mile radius of your house will do a good job of beating back allergies because it contains pollens and allergens encapsulated in honey suspension. The low doses of allergens is what reduces your sensitivities to them. If you live in Montana and eat my Texas honey, it will do nothing for you except taste really good on a buttered biscuit with a glass of milk.

Bee stings themselves have been proven in studies to ease arthritis. The old timers believed this, but a 20 year old study showed that the reaction to a bee sting was that the body produced cortisone in the stung area in response. Cortisone happens to be what a physician will inject you with for arthritis, so the old-timers may not have had research Ph.D.'s but they could observe things.

Colony Collapse Disorder seems to be occurring in row-crop areas. I suspect some sort of insecticide or something used on row crops (cotton, corn, etc...) is causing it. We have no CCD here where it is pasture and rangeland. Local bee keepers aren't complaining at all or losing hives. We do however have Africanized bees, so we must requeen every year or learn to accept some really nasty behavior from our colonies. Africanized bees aren't all that bad though. In my experience, they are more aggressive at everything, including pollenating flowers, gathering nectar, and social grooming which keeps mites down in the hives. Gone are the days where you can work your bees in short sleeves and no veil. Now it requires a full bee suit.

For those interested in keeping bees, get the book by John Vivian called "Keeping bees". It is the most plain-English written book out there. You can probably get into it for $250.00 if you go cheap and build much of your own equipment. It is an addicting activity for many, many reasons.

 

Honey , salt, powder milk, wheat. The basic Mormon four for a years food storage.

If your google fu is strong there is much to be found on this, including recipes and such.

I had two swarms last year, and passed them over to my bee keeper friend. Am expecting my honey reward from him this spring and over the summer.



Also probably been said, but local honey will help one develop a resistance to local allergies. OR so I have been told.