It is not unusual for raw honey to crystallize, or turn hard. We’re going to show you how to decrystallize honey without destroying the health benefits of raw honey. Last year, our first year beekeeping, our honey crystallized about six months after we harvested it from the hives. Most of our honey was gone by then so only about a quart was left and it wasn’t a big deal to scoop the hardened honey out and mix into warm tea.
But this year, our honey crystalized after about a month of being extracted from our bee hives! We noticed it first in the clear glass pint and quart size canning jars. About two months after we harvested honey this year, our 5 gallon buckets full of honey were crystallized and solid. How and why did this happen so quickly? We were baffled! So of course I started doing some research…..
Why does honey crystallize?
We knew from experience of using honey for many years that honey will start to crystallize the older it gets. We also knew honey would start to crystallize when it was cold. But our newly extracted honey was neither old nor cold.
It was stored in the large pantry in our mud room which stays just slightly cooler than the main part of our house that we try to keep around 70 degrees with the help of our wood stove.
Then we came across this helpful article explaining why honey crystallizes. This was such a fascinating read! We figured out that our honey crystallized so quickly for two reasons. First, there’s a handy chart in the article showing the crystallization rates of different types of honey. Our honey is primarily alfalfa honey since we’re surrounded by hundreds of acres of alfalfa. Alfalfa honey is listed as having a rapid crystallization rate. So that makes sense why last year our honey crystallized after about six months.
But why did it start to crystallize after about a month this year? The article states, “The time it will take the honey to crystallize depends mostly on the ratio of fructose to glucose, the glucose to water ratio…..The higher the glucose and the lower the water content of honey, the faster the crystallization.”
We had quite a dry year last year, much drier than the year before. Some of the alfalfa fields around us are irrigated, but even then the irrigation pipes don’t water the whole field at once. The fields are watered one section at a time.
So while this irrigation water helped supplement the lack of rainfall we were getting, the alfalfa still had less moisture than the year before when we had a lot more rain. No wonder our honey crystallized so fast this year!
How to decrystallize honey
Using crystallized honey to sweeten my herbal tea is no big deal. I just scoop out some of the hardened honey on a spoon and stir into my warm cup of tea or honey hot cocoa. The honey melts and mixes into my tea.
But try spreading crystallized honey on a piece of bread- it’s impossible! Well, it is possible but it basically tears up the bread as you try to spread the hardened crystallized honey.
When I want to use honey to sweeten a recipe like our pumpkin bread, I need a larger quantity than just a little spoonful. Trying to scoop a cup of hard, crystallized honey out of a five gallon bucket is tough work.
It even started bending our kitchen spoons we were using! We then had to switch over to trying to scoop the hard crystallized honey out with an ice cream scooper. What a big mess!
We decided to try scooping the hard crystallized honey from the big buckets into pint size glass canning jars to warm up and decrystallize.
When we extracted honey in the fall, we filled quite a few pint and quart size glass canning jars with honey but most of them were given away to friends and family as gifts. Our personal honey supply was poured into several 5lb buckets and some 5 gallon buckets.
To liquefy crystallized honey, you need to warm it up. But the key is to not heat it up too hot so you don’t kill off the beneficial nutrients in the honey that make raw honey so good for you! We read a couple articles that said make sure not to heat the honey over 104 degrees F.
To warm our honey and decrystallize it, we place the pint size glass canning jars full of honey in a stainless steel pot and fill the pot with water. Then we sit the pot on a trivet on our wood stove. You could easily put the pot on a standard kitchen stove top and turn the heat on a low simmer.
The idea is to warm the water up in the pot that will then in turn warm up the honey. You don’t want the water to boil since that will be too hot and will overheat the honey and kill the beneficial nutrients in the honey.
We like to use our wood stove to cook food so warming our crystallized honey on the wood stove seemed like the easiest thing for us to do.
We never leave the pot of warming honey on the wood stove when we are not home but only use this method when we are home and can keep an eye on it. Usually the low simmering water heats and decrystallizes the honey after sitting on the wood stove for a few hours.
But how do we decrystallize large buckets of honey?
We racked our brains trying to come up with ideas for how to decrystallize big buckets of crystallized honey without having to scoop it out one pint at a time.
Our first idea was to sit the buckets of cyrstallized honey in the bath tub and fill it with hot water. The problem with this idea is that the water would cool off and not maintain a steady warmth like the pot of water on the wood stove or kitchen stove top.
Then my husband found this great idea for a warming blanket for a 5 gallon bucket. It is specifically made to fit a 5 gallon bucket for the purpose of warming crystallized honey. This warming blanket would work great for us, but it also is a bit spendy for our needs right now.
If we were big commercial bee keepers this investment wouldn’t be a big deal. But at this time our beekeeping adventures are primarily hobbyist and mainly for our own personal honey use and gifting to family and friends.
Our answer came when I realized that my big canning pots would be wide enough to hold the buckets of crystallized honey! I tried it first with a 5lb honey bucket which fit perfectly into my smaller canning pot.
I used the same method as we did when decrystallizing honey in glass canning jars. I sat the bucket down in the canning pot, filled the pot with water, and sat it on the stove top to warm up.
I used our long turkey thermometer like this one to stick down in the water in the pot to gauge the heat of the water since it was difficult to tell how hot it was (with a smaller pot of water and glass canning jars inside I can see if the water is getting too hot by seeing if bubbles are forming in the pan)
Once we learned how to decrystallize honey, it was just a matter of slowly working through over 100lbs of hard, crystallized honey to warm it up and return it to the golden goodness that drips easily off a spoon.
One thing we learned when decrystallizing honey is that if you don’t decrystallize the whole container and instead leave some hard honey in there, as the honey sits it will start to crystallize again (and more quickly too!)
When warming up large containers or buckets, this seems to happen a bit more often since the honey won’t all warm up at the same heat at the same time.
What I find helpful is to stir the honey a couple times while it is warming. This helps to create a more even warming pattern in the honey to make sure it all warms up and decrystallizes.
Have you had to decrystallize honey? Do you have any tips to share?
We buy our honey in 5 gal buckets and it is typically crystalized 🙁 I have done the same method as you on our stove, using gas just because I can regulate the heat better than on our wood stove. I then jar up all the liquid honey in glass pints and quarts. I do sell these from our home. In our big drafty farmhouse, the honey will sometimes crystalize again so I’ve been putting those glass jars in my dehydrator on a low temp and re-liquifying them. Works really well.
Interesting, I hadn’t ever thought about trying to slowly warm the crystallized honey on low in the dehydrator!
PS never heard of the bee blanket before….that is so cool!
We hadn’t heard of one before until a few months ago when my husband spotted one in a beekeeping magazine. We were so excited to see such a thing exists!!
Once the honey decrystallizes, does it stay liquid? We have gone thru half of a 5gal bucket and its just now starting to crystallize. Good thing is we bought squeeze bottles and stored a 5 gal bucket of honey in 48 squeeze bottles. (The bee farmer wanted his bucket back ?)
It’ll be easy to decrystallize the small bottles, just didn’t know if once done they stay OR will I need to continually decrystallize.
From our experience, once we’ve fully liquefied the honey and decrystallized it then it stays liquid. That being said, we typically have used the honey we decrystallized within a couple weeks. We’ve been decrystallizing one bucket at a time and using it all before we decrystallize another bucket so our liquified honey isn’t sitting around for too long.. I’m not sure if it will crystallize again if it sits for a couple months.
In my experience if you heat it up at the right temp ( below 100) it will re-crystallize eventually, which is good. If you heat it too high it will remain liquid.
Thanks for sharing your experience, that’s something we noticed too since we also try not to heat it up too high
The moisture content of the honey has nothing to do with what the bees are collecting as they collect nectar not honey. After it is taken into the hive it is processed by the bees into honey, the main activity there is dehydration in the cells before the honey is capped with wax to stabilize it at around 18% moisture. On a dry year it can have a slightly lower moisture content than that before the bees cap the cells.
Hi,
I learned a lot today from your web page. I buy bottles of honey and later on I get the same problem. I microwave the bottle without a cap and then use in my tea etc. I have a suggestion can do Youtube regarding honey project from your backyard and sent to all of use if can do it.
Thanks
almas
Doesn’t microwaving kill honey’s beneficial properties?
Also how about adding real lemon juice? Or a few drops of a 100% pure organic citrus essential oil?
I haven’t researched if microwaving honey will kill the beneficial properties. I think ultimately it comes down to the level of heat the honey is being heated to which is why we slowly warm it up on the stove top to decrystallize it.
We haven’t tried video taping our projects to place them on youtube yet but definitely something to think about!
Is it safe to decrystallize honey in the original plastic container on the stove using a trivet before transferring it to a glass jar
Another good idea for warming up the honey is to use a crockpot. Just put your glass jars in your crockpot and then pour some water in the bottom of the crockpot (being careful not to splash any into the honey jars) and then set the crockpot on low. You do not want to put the lid on the crockpot since that would collect condensation and drip into the jars, but just keep it warming until the honey has liquified. I saw this done on pinterest with using chocolate for dipping. 🙂
That’s a great idea since you could keep the temp low in a crock pot so the honey wouldn’t get too hot!
I would be afraid to heat up any plastic bucket containing honey if it isn’t BPA free? I do like the crock pot idea! For my glass quart jars containing honey, my dad always taught me to place them onto a metal canning jar lid ring down in the water in the pot on my stove so the glass isn’t in direct contact with the hot bottom of the pan. Also, couldn’t we use an electric heating blanket wrapped around the large bucket of honey instead of the honey blanket? I’m sure it would do the same thing. 🙂
I agree on the plastic, we bought food grade buckets that were specifically BPA free to store our food in. An electric blanket is a great idea- I haven’t seen one of those in years so never even thought of that!
i have to agree with Susan – I think an old electric blanket would work just fine – as clever as we all are I am sure we could make a “bee blanket” out of a working electric blanket!!
Your honey has beautiful, teeny-tiny crystals. You should capitalize on that. Whip it up and sell it in tubs as whipped honey. People pay good money for whipped honey around here.
I put my crystallized honey into the top of a double boiler with water in the bottom pot. Placed in on simmer and kept an eye on it. After it was liquid I poured it into glass jars and keep them in my cupboard.
Given that we don’t keep bees we only have a small jar of honey in the house at any one time, but you’re right – it’s a pain when it crystallizes! I have tried, once or twice, to warm it up as you suggest, with mixed results. I shall have to try again, since you have had success 🙂
Great ideas. I place my honey in our minivan on a sunny day. It gets quite warm in there with all the windows.
What is your thoughts about using those mug or candle warmer to decrystallize honey?
I’ve ran my crystallized honey in the dishwasher, works really well. But that being said it may have been to high of a temp. I’ll have to check next time.
I have friends that produce their own honey and she just throws the sealed buckets into their hot tub!!
Wow, now that’s a creative idea I never heard of before!
Anyone using an electric smoker? I decided to give it a try. I have seen several Youtubers using 75 and 100 watt light bulbs to de-crystallize honey but that does not translate to a temperature. Then I found a Youtube presentation of the whole process, This person (Trevor ? ) marked his termperature on the refrigerator door at 46 degrees centigrade which I calculated to be 114.7 degrees fahrenheit. Thanks, Trevor. The smoker racks will not hold a 60# bucket so I split the weight to two buckets. My first try (24 hours) heated the honey (at 100 degrees F.) but did not dissolve the crystallized honey, Now running a second try at 115 degrees F. for another 24 hours. I hoping that this is not an over correction and I am on the right track.
Storing glass jars of honey that has partially crystallized on the window ledge where the sun will slowly heat it up works well. Regularly give the jars a shake will help..