# mouse in honey



## thueck

Much to my alarm when I opened a 5 gallon bucket of honey I extracted a couple of weeks ago I found a dead mouse floating on the top of the honey. It appears that it has been there for a few weeks based on the smell. I have scraped off and discarded the top inches of honey but I'm wondering if the honey is edible. The bucket does not have a valve on the bottom though I would be willing to drill a hole in the bottom of the bucket to drain the bottom portion of the honey. Any thoughts or suggestions on what to do would be appreciated.


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## TalonRedding

Eek!!

Would you eat it knowing it had a decomposing mouse in it? I wouldn't. But I also wouldn't write it off as a loss either. Feed it back to your bees this winter or next spring. It won't go to waste that way and you'll be able to sleep comfortably at night knowing that no one will get sick off of it.


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## mark2215

How did a mouse get into the bucket? I'm constantly fighting the mouse battle in my 100 year old house and have been worried about this. I was hoping plastic buckets with lids was enough to keep them away.


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## clyderoad

Don't eat it.
Use caution if you feed it to the bees.


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## thueck

mark2215 said:


> How did a mouse get into the bucket? I'm constantly fighting the mouse battle in my 100 year old house and have been worried about this. I was hoping plastic buckets with lids was enough to keep them away.


The lid was not snapped down just resting in the rim. I won't make that mistake again considering that 5 gal was half of my harvest!


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## JRG13

Ummmm, I'd toss it.


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## beeware10

best you can do is feed the honey next spring and let them convert to brood and bees.


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## Ian

Seriously ??


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## Norcalkyle

If there was a turd floating around in a bowl of soup would you scoop it out and finish the bowl?


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## max2

Norcalkyle said:


> If there was a turd floating around in a bowl of soup would you scoop it out and finish the bowl?


I guess only if you could drill a hole below


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## Michael Palmer

Extra protein. Yumm.


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## BeeMoose

You cannot sell that honey. It has been contaminated. I wouldn't even save it for myself or family, and I'm a tightwad.

Cut your loss and chalk it up as a lesson learned. I too would not feed it to my bees.


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## e-spice

Man, do the sensible thing here and throw it away. Don't feed it back to the bees and certainly don't try to eat it. Focus your attention on how to make sure that never happens again.


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## thueck

Thanks to all for taking time to reply. I'll toss it in the dumpster.


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## AHudd

My wife said, :no::no::no:

Alex


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## Barry

thueck said:


> Thanks to all for taking time to reply. I'll toss it in the dumpster.


So other bees can take it back to their hive? I would dig a hole and bury it.


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## thueck

I will take it to the hazmat center to make sure nobody takes the sealed container.


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## jbeshearse

Good grief. Feed it back to your bees. Have you seen some of the things the bees forage on? dung, honeydew honey, sawdust, etc. it won't hurt them to feed it back. And remember undiluted honey is antibacterial due to osmotic properties. I would not eat it, but it will be fine to feed back to the bees for reprocessing.


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## TalonRedding

jbeshearse said:


> Good grief. Feed it back to your bees. Have you seen some of the things the bees forage on? dung, honeydew honey, sawdust, etc. it won't hurt them to feed it back. And remember undiluted honey is antibacterial due to osmotic properties. I would not eat it, but it will be fine to feed back to the bees for reprocessing.


Exactly.


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## clyderoad

has anyone actually feed their bees honey that has had a putrid mouse in it for a few weeks?
just wondering.


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## beeware10

bacteria can not live in honey. If you knew what was allowed in food products you probably would change your diet. many beekeepers have had dead mice in their supers and hives. were they thrown away?


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## clyderoad

i've had mice in my hives and no they weren't thrown away.
i have canned more than a few frames that had mouse piss all over them and didn't pass the smell test
after cleaning them up and air drying.
but my question is whether anyone has actually fed their bees honey that has had a putrid mouse in it for a few weeks?
have you?


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## beeware10

the closest we have had is a mouse falling into a 5 gal pail with maybe 1 inch honey. put it outside for bees to clean out. mouse was dead but not very old. If the bees saw a problem they would not have cleaned up. Its the idea more than anything else that people dislike. bees know more about that stuff than I do.


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## D Coates

clyderoad said:


> has anyone actually feed their bees honey that has had a putrid mouse in it for a few weeks?
> just wondering.


Good point. I haven't but I've seen them on some gnarly stuff that I wouldn't want sitting anywhere near my plate. It's more of our hang up than theirs. Personally I'd save it and feed it back to captured swarms in nucs in early spring. I never harvest from nucs and they'll be completely consuming anything they get trying to build up comb and brood. I've had some bad spills while harvesting in the garage that I "saved" to feed back to nucs. No mouse in it but plenty of general stuff from a cement garage floor. Too much work to not fully utilize the assets. If they refuse to take it that's a whole different ball of wax but I'd bet they'll make short work of it.


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## Phoebee

It has been nearly 5 decades since I have seen a mouse in honey. We found it in a barely used half gallon jar of honey up at my uncle's cabin. It appeared to be very well preserved. It was totally immersed, which would have helped stop decay. It looked like it had died happy.

No, we didn't eat the honey.

It is just about as disgusting than those little brown flecks found all over one of our stored honey frames, the pellets the wax moths that got into it left behind.

I'll bet you folks process all sorts of contaminated honey where you have no clue what's been on it. Classify honey with sausage and the law ... if you love it you probably should not watch it being made.


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## jbeshearse

Phoebee said:


> It has been nearly 5 decades since I have seen a mouse in honey. We found it in a barely used half gallon jar of honey up at my uncle's cabin. It appeared to be very well preserved. It was totally immersed, which would have helped stop decay. It looked like it had died happy.
> 
> No, we didn't eat the honey.
> 
> It is just about as disgusting than those little brown flecks found all over one of our stored honey frames, the pellets the wax moths that got into it left behind.
> 
> I'll bet you folks process all sorts of contaminated honey where you have no clue what's been on it. Classify honey with sausage and the law ... if you love it you probably should not watch it being made.


Its that rare "Wildanimal Honey" instead of "wildflower"


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## Michael Bush

_If_ I were to feed it to the bees, I would do it in early spring when it will get burned up raising brood, or in late fall where it will get burned up over winter. I would try to make sure it's not a time that it will get stored for long.


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## rolftonbees

Commercial producers recall millions of pounds of material when such things are discovered.

Yet many here want to spread this contamination by feeding it to bees. 

Think about it, typhoid, or hepatitis or any number of things spread by rodents could be in thst honey. The bees eat it then contaminate flowers for a long range cross contamination and so it goes.

Rotting mouse honey needs destroyed. 

Thst being said, many est road kill and such, why not out it on your table to pour over opossum and armadillo vittles.


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## Planner

A question like this deserves no answer.


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## vjordan

I'm not super experienced with bees yet, but I know that mice harbor lots and lots of nasty diseases if they aren't domesticated. I'm not sure that the bees could filter out that kind of bacteria/viruses (such as hantavirus), so it might just be best to be safe and be rid of the stuff.


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## aunt betty

Have not fed honey back that had "a putrid dead mouse in it for weeks". 
However:
My extractor used to have a spout with a nice valve that broke off. Now it has a hole where the honey comes out and that's it.
We cover the extractor and leave a quart jar or two-gallon bucket to let it drip into after an extracting session. 
At least twice I've came back to find an inch or inch and a half of honey with a dead mouse in it. 
Of course it gets set outside for the bees to clean up. 

It creeps me out and has me taking the extractor apart and cleaning it at the car wash prior to each and every extracting session to check for ants and mouse terds. So far no mouse terds found.


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## sc-bee

clyderoad said:


> has anyone actually feed their bees honey that has had a putrid mouse in it for a few weeks?
> just wondering.


I thought honey killed all germs


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