# Honey leaked onto garage floor



## dadux (Feb 23, 2012)

I went into the garage to bottle a 5 gal bucket of honey. To my great disappointment the gate had leaked & all of it has on the garage floor. A very unhappy sight. So I scrapped it all up and will most likely dump it in the pond. It is no doubt contaminated with goose poo from geese that were kept in there earlier in the spring. The floor was swept but not sterilized. I had considered making mead but I don't think I could drink it knowing where it had been. Oh what a sad loss of this years harvest.
D


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## DirtyLittleSecret (Sep 10, 2014)

dadux said:


> I went into the garage to bottle a 5 gal bucket of honey. To my great disappointment the gate had leaked & all of it has on the garage floor. A very unhappy sight. So I scrapped it all up and will most likely dump it in the pond. It is no doubt contaminated with goose poo from geese that were kept in there earlier in the spring. The floor was swept but not sterilized. I had considered making mead but I don't think I could drink it knowing where it had been. Oh what a sad loss of this years harvest.
> D


That's just "Artisinal Mead" at the farmers market. Get Goosed!


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

I was hoping this thread wasn't going to turn into a discussion like the "dead mouse thread"......is it still safe to eat?


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

Save and feed back in the spring. Unless it is just a little then not worth the time.


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## Sky (Jul 7, 2015)

that's a bummer.... sorry for your loss - Mead next year...... 

so what to do with that honey..... 
if it was summer, I would say just leave the garage door open for a few days and the bees will clean most of it up. you could scrape it up and throw it in a hive top feeder - if it's warm enough for the bees to get to it, and they need it, they will certainly take advantage of it - the bees will over look any foreign matter and just eat around it if the honey is otherwise good.

could you scrape it up and eat it? - probably, but that's would be kinda gross since you knew what had been on the floor - sounds like it comes down to what's your tolerance for goose pooh? picking gravel/sand/goose pooh/etc out of the honey at serving time probably won;t add much to its appeal - though it may turn out to be the longest lasting jar of honey you ever had . if you made mead or cooked with it (still kinda gross), you would know where it had been, and would be wondering "what is that" every time you see a speck that's not honey colored in your finished product. I wouldn't.... the human stomach is a pretty tough thing, but there is always the possibility that "something bad" has made its way from the floor into the honey - so there is some risk - do you subscribe to the 5-second rule?

should you give it away or sell it - no....no... no.... definitely don't do that. better to toss it. Even if you got the chunks out and it was (lab-tested) safe, and the consumer had no idea you had marinated goose doo with it, ethically it would just be wrong on so many levels... 

since you're talking about 5 gallons - the whole harvest - I would try to salvage some of it to reduce the loss - those bees worked themselves to death for that..... But I would not eat it as is - it needs to be reprocessed/cleaned - I'd feed it back to the bees - they'll take whats good and store it back in to cells for you (recycling) to harvest again next year (so not a total loss). just scrape it up, let it flow through a coarse strainer, dump the honey it in a hive top feeder, and toss the rest into the compost pile.

There is a lesson in here (it's a crappy way to learn it though)...... ALWAYS have a container/bucket/plate/something under your honey gate....

Sky


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

Riskybizz said:


> I was hoping this thread wasn't going to turn into a discussion like the "dead mouse thread"......is it still safe to eat?


No it is not safe to eat, but the mouse container was :no: Since you already scraped it all up..I would feed it back to the bees. How did you not catch it before it was all on the floor? Guess you don't go into the garage much


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## phyber (Apr 14, 2015)

why not feed it back to the bees in spring?


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## e-spice (Sep 21, 2013)

My-smokepole said:


> Save and feed back in the spring. Unless it is just a little then not worth the time.


I would be afraid it would get moved into a honey super that I would harvest.


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## Riskybizz (Mar 12, 2010)

"No it is not safe to eat, but the mouse container was".... 

Ah...so now I know where all that natural honey comes from..


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## Sky (Jul 7, 2015)

e-spice said:


> I would be afraid it would get moved into a honey super that I would harvest.


Yep.... that's what I was suggesting... the bees will "clean" it up, then re-store it in the combs....What the bees don't need can be re-harvested next year and processed as usual.... 
Personally, I wouldn't let a little goose-poop twice-removed get in the way of my mead.....


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## max2 (Dec 24, 2009)

It is a bit like that "dead mouse..."
In Australia...honey from the floor would not be used for human consumption and my friends and I would not feed it to the bees...

About mead. I will make sure never to buy US made mead ( looking at some of the comments)

Clean the floor ( honey is agresive on concrete) and learn the lesson. Buy a quality gate ( Parker makes a good one in Australia)
and look forward to Spring!


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