Crystallised OSR (Canola) Honey

[little john]

If - for whatever reason: whether a beek didn't know about the existence of the crop, or whether as the result of a screw-up - beeks find themselves with hard, crystallised OSR (Canola) honey in their combs, is there any way of then recovering that honey ?

Other forums (fora ?) have failed to pull the desired rabbit out of the hat - any bits of advanced wisdom over here ?

LJ

[Finski]

.
At least I have. I have handled hundreds of kilos crystall canola honey during decades.
I have not destroyed and melted combs as many on forum advices.

There are several ways. The main problem in Canola is that bees drop the sugar crystalls onto floor and carry them out as rubbish.
Bees clean the combs but you may miss the most of honey. 25% goes to energy when bees move stuff to another place and store it.

1) Give 3 frames to the hive. Scab the cappings off. Spray water on combs.
during 24 hours bees suck part of honey off, perhaps 2 millimetre. Now you may pour water a 2 millimetre layer on crystalls. It goes deeper into honey and after that bees are able to dilute the crystalls.

If you give that during flow, bees cap again the honey. So wait for rainy days or something like that.

2) Put a honey frame between brood frames.
Crab a piece of cappings off , 2-3 inches and spray water. Put that frame between larva frames. Bees start to clean cells for brooding and every week you may give 3 crystallized frames to the hive.

the cleaning capacity of the hive is limited. Don't give too much.

3) Cleaning with swarms.
When you have swarm of artificial swarm, put into box 3 frames crystallized Honey and the rest foundations.
After a week crystall frames are full of brood and foundations have bee drawn.


4) In large scale

Uncap the combs with pressure washer. You whip the capping off. Cells get water too. Then put the uncapped box topmost to  the hive.
Next day you see what bees have done.
Pour water over the cells a good layer and put the comb back. If you are lucky, bees lick the honey off and move it deeper into the hive.
This year's late summer I handled about 500 kg crystallized honey but it was not canola.

I got an big accident last summer when wax moth concured my honey comb store. I was afraid to extract honey because wing powder was every where.
This summer I fed the Honey to new honey and it happened more than well.

[Finski]

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If you try to feed honey outside the hive, bees destroys the combs.

[little john]

Finski - many thanks for those tips - appreciated.

If this were to happen to me, I had indeed planned on smashing up the combs (maybe with a blender) and adding warm water - to use the chemical characteristics of honey (water-soluble) and wax (non-water-soluble) to separate them - then maybe ... extract the excess water by freezing it out ?

But simply spraying an open comb with water sounds like a lot less work ...

Presumably bees can deal with any smaller quantities of crystallised honey in the brood combs themselves without too much trauma ? Your post suggests that would be the case.

LJ

[Finski]

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My theory is that near the brood area temp is high ( 36C) and crystalls melt back to some degree and bees do not draw sugar to floor and carry out.

The combs has as much honey as inside  the cells.


System makes work but the honey and combs are valuable when we measure it as money.