Bottling Honey on the Homestead

I write about this topic because this is how we spent the WHOLE day today ...bottling honey. I am grateful for a lot of honey, but it will be a little while before I want to eat any of the stuff! We bottled into glass jars and plastic bottles, very big and and medium and very little containers.

The optimum place to bottle honey is a honey house, which is a small outbuilding designed for working only on bee related projects. It is a clean place, and bee-proof. If bees or yellow jackets can get in, they will, and try to steal the honey! Of course, sometimes bees get carried in on equipment, and some bee folks have little one-way escape hatches installed on the ceilings so that these bees can escape.

That is all well and good, but at this time we do not have a honey house. So, we used the next best thing...our kitchen. This is great in some ways, and not so great in others. It is convenient for storage of items and close proximity to a sink, but it would seem that one drop of spilled honey can be spread to cover 100 square feet of floor, counters, chairs, and door knobs with STICKY. The clean up from bottling honey in the house can be quite an undertaking in itself! However...you don't ever want to simply bottle honey outdoors as it will attract a cloud of honeybees and yellow jackets!

When bottling honey, make sure it is not cold...it won't flow very well. The warmer the honey, the faster it flows, but applying heat is not usually necessary. Just room temperature is fine, unless you live at or near one of the poles.

You can bottle your honey into any non-reactive jar or food grade bucket that is air-tight. Canning jars with two-piece lids are great, but don't try to use the white freezer lids that fit on the jars, as they tend to leak.

All containers must be very clean. We fill to within 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the top, and tighten the lid. No further treatment is needed. Raw honey keeps just fine at room temperature in clean, air-tight jars for a LONG time. Sometimes it may crystallize, and what to do when that happens is covered in another blog post. The honey is still fine.

I am sure sure I am missing some facts about bottling honey, but I am tired and dinner is just about ready. I will add more as it comes to mind. And no...there isn't any honey involved with this meal!! :)