# Crystallization timeframe



## maredzki (May 12, 2020)

Hello everyone!

I sold/given away a lot of my bottled honey but one that I have left (besides a 5 gal bucket) I noticed that it started to crystalize already. It was harvested in August and had around 17% moisture content. Honey from years prior didn't crystalize that quickly. Is there a general method of figuring out crystallization timeframe? To me, it would be difficult to estimate as the nectar comes from different sources which sugars can crystalize at different times. Yet one thing was in common to the sources, the moisture content. 

Thank you and I'm open to your thoughts.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

maredzki said:


> To me, it would be difficult to estimate as the nectar comes from different sources which sugars can crystalize at different times.


Bingo
It's the flower it comes from as well as temps and moisture content, but mostly the flower the nectar comes from. Without knowing the flower source, impossible to time the when.


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## Jack Grimshaw (Feb 10, 2001)

With Ray on this. Some honeys,like canola,can crystalze in the comb if left to long.
In my area(S New England), my late summer,fall harvest readily crystalizes but spring honey harvested in June sometimes stays liquid for a long time.


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## Honey Hive Farms (Nov 1, 2012)

We harvest ten different honeys and all of them are pretty stable. We have noticed the Mesquite and Clover crystalize the quickest. Each nectar / harvest / state we harvest in has some type of different rate of crystalizing. Good luck..
NOTE: We do feel that most honeys do hate a lot of temperature change or buckets sitting on the concrete .....


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## Live Oak (Oct 11, 2008)

Agree with Ray. We try to hold off crystallization by storing our honey in a heated room with an electric oil radiator heater next to the pallet of bottled honey containers. The warm environment seems to help hold off or delay crystallization but I can still find a container here and there that is beginning to crystallize.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Honey is made up of glucose, fructose, and water, plus a bunch of other sugars and stuff in small amounts.

It is the glucose that tends to crystallize, and how fast that occurs depends on three things.

First is the ratio of glucose to water. Some honeys have a lot of glucose and not much fructose. Some have a lot of fructose and not much glucose. The more glucose compared with the amount of water, the stronger the tendency to crystallize. That accounts for most of the difference between honeys.

Second is the presence of nucleation sites for crystallization to begin. Rough surfaces, grains of pollen, or small crystals of glucose can form the start of crystals. Pretty much all honey will have numerous tiny crystals (microscopic ones) which under the right conditions will grow larger. This is the reason why most honey in stores has been heated. As the temperature increases the amount of glucose that can dissolve in water also increases. If honey is heated to somewhere around 160F, all of the tiny glucose crystals will dissolve. After that it will keep without crystallizing for probably a year. However when it does crystallize there will not be a lot of crystals to start with, so the crystals which do form will be few and large. Also the honey will taste bad. In addition filtering out pollen (which also requires heating) also helps to reduce nucleation sites. So most honey in stores has been heated and filtered.

Third is temperature. As the temperature is reduced the amount of glucose that can dissolve in water decreases. As a result, the speed of crystallization increases as temperature is lowered. The rate of crystallization is fastest at about 55F. Below that temperature the rate of crystallization decreases for a very peculiar reason.
What happens is the honey becomes more viscous. The small crystals grow by depleting the glucose in the honey which is near them until the glucose in the honey near the crystal is at the equilibrium concentration. Then the crystal stops growing until the honey near the crystal mixes with other honey which has a higher concentration of glucose. As the temperature decreases and the honey becomes more viscous the rate of crystallization slows down because the mixing goes slower. At temperatures below -10F the rate of crystallization slows to pretty much nothing.

I usually put my honey in the freezer at -8F and it keeps without crystallizing for at least a year, probably longer. When I bring it out it usually crystallizes in a few months. this is also a good idea for comb honey as crystallized comb honey isn't generally preferred.

An interesting and fun parallel to the delay of crystallization of supercooled honey is supercooled water. A bottle of water which is very pure has no particles for ice to form on. The inside of the bottle is very smooth. So it is hard for crystals to get started. If you put it outside when the temperature is 0F or so where it is very stable, not in the wind. (The trunk of a car is a good place) it will often supercool and remain liquid.
If you pick it up carefully and bring it into the house it will remain liquid. If you then shake it, it will partially and very rapidly crystallize, forming a wet slush inside the bottle.

The supercooled water at 0F will be (in this case) 32F below freezing, and the specific heat is about 1 cal/g per degree F. The heat of fusion is about 80 cal/g. So the fraction of water turning to ice will be around 32/80 = 40%. The water-ice mixture will be at 32F.

Shaking the bottle creates different energy levels, some of the water starts to crystallize. I showed this trick to my mother, and she concluded there must be something wrong with the water in that bottle, to turn cloudy with ice crystals like that. She wouldn't drink it.

If you cool the water to around -48F the water should all turn to ice, but I haven't tried that. Let me know if you do.


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## maredzki (May 12, 2020)

Thank you everyone who participated. It seems the honey did crystalize rather quick this year and the bucket that I have remaining is placed now off the garage concrete floor. I will just have to slightly heat up the honey (below 110F) to de-crystalize it.


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