A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year. If I’m 40 years old, and guess that I might live to be 80, that’s only 52 pounds of honey, which I could easily buy in bulk. Honey doesn’t expire, and even assuming the price doesn’t skyrocket from bee die-offs, inflation alone will make the price go up over time.
Does it make sense to buy all the rest of the honey I’ll ever need for the rest of my life, right now?
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I buy a 5 gallon bucket of honey once every 6ish years. It’s one of the only sweeteners my wife can have so we use it in everything that needs a sweeter taste. I fill small 20oz jars with it and seal the bucket back up. It’s a good investment because you can get it much much cheaper. I buy mine from Sleeping bear farms in Michigan.
Is it dangerous? What if the bears wake up?
Hello.
Oh wait you meant the other kind of bear…
obviously you have to wait for them to go lookin’ for pic-a-nik baskets then.
They hibernate for quite a while. Plenty of time to steal their honey jars.
It’s probably better to buy it along the way.
Yes inflation will make honey more expensive over the coming 50 years or so. But it will make everything else more expensive too.
I’ll keep my money on a savings account instead.
You’re likely better off investing the same amount of money.
Buying it all now is betting that inflation will be higher than your investment return over the next 40 years. That’s not a good bet unless the world literally collapses.
What do you think investing less than $200 is going to earn you?
What do you think buying $200 worth of honey will save you?
It’ll get me at least a few years of happiness, and perhaps make my ensuing case of diabetes mellitus more appropriately named than that of most peoples’.
About 20 trips to the grocery store and the associated gas prices.
…You know you can buy multiple things at once at the store?
Like $200 worth of honey?
Exactly! You get it.
I like honey.
I think a collapse is quite likely
So it’s a good bet, got it.
All the honey I’ve ever bought has crystallized before I could get through the small bottle. Yeah, you can heat it, it’s a pain to have to deal with when I just want to use it. I’d rather buy what I need fresh.
One of our local honey dudes does 8 oz honey jars that are wider than they are tall. I like those.
Lifetime supply of honey for me is one fairly small jar, except that one time I had a weird craving for honey in the comb, so I ordered a square of it and ate it like a sandwich. I guess I saw bears doing it and thought it looked tasty.
Beekeeper here. I won’t comment on whether or not you should. But since I know a little about storing honey, here are some things to consider:
If you do this, you need to make sure it’s sealed in airtight containers.
Part of what gives honey its antimicrobial properties (and long shelf life) is its low moisture content. But it’s hygroscopic and will pull moisture directly from the air if exposed. After it pulls enough moisture, it can ferment, grow bacteria, or otherwise not be fit for normal consumption.
Also, honey can crystallize over time. This doesn’t mean it’s bad, but in order to re-liquify it, you’ll need to heat it. So consider your storage container size and material carefully.
That said, 52 lbs is less than a 5 gallon bucket full (at roughly 12 lbs / gallon), so it shouldn’t take an incredible amount of space if you choose to do it. Or, in smaller portions, a quart mason jar will hold about 3 lbs. So 2 cases (12 jars each) would exceed your quantity requirements, and be more manageable than a 60lb bucket.
Also if you can buy it in bulk at wholesale prices, it will be cheaper. Retail can be anywhere from $5-$20 per pound (depending on what/where) whereas the last I checked, wholesale prices were more like $1.50 - $3.50 per pound, depending on quantity.
Hope that helps.
Does anyone else REALLY want this crazy honey buyer to get his honey from this knowledgeable beekeeper? It’s a Lemmy matchmaking story!
Unfortunately, I’ve really scaled back my number of hives and now only get enough honey to keep my immediate family supplied.
But I appreciate the sentiment.
But surely you know another beekeeper who is on Lemmy? There must be 1s of you!
Hello! I have considered getting into bee keeping as a retirement thing but I don’t know a good resource to start learning.
Are there any good online communities you can recommend, forums, etc?
When I was first starting out, I spent a lot of time at the BeeSource forums. I haven’t been there in a while, so I don’t know how it currently is, but I found it a good resource initially. FWIW, I always found the beekeeping-related subreddits to be pretty hit and miss.
There are tons of books available, possibly from your local library, but some are better than others. Wicwas press has a lot of good books, but I think they skew more towards advanced beginner and later, rather than the basic beginner.
But most importantly, there’s a saying that “all beekeeping is local”. While the basics are generally the same everywhere, the specifics vary depending on location. Not only things like temperature, humidity, and rainfall, but also what kinds of plants bloom, when and how often.
So regardless of any reading or other research you do, one of the best things you can do to learn is join a local beekeeping club. There will surely be members that have been there for a while, and you can learn from them what really works in your area.
Also, if you’re in the US, check with your local Ag Extension office. They may have resources or info to help you get started. Possibly even classes.
Thank you so much!
I hadn’t really considered how much of the knowledge is local. That makes sense though, in a duh why didn’t I already think of that kind of way.
I’m not ready to get started yet but I like reading about potential future hobbies or things I just find generally interesting, such as bee keeping, so the general knowledge will be fine for now.
I’ll add that if you have all that honey, you might also eat more of it than you’d initially planned and run out sooner. Personally, I would start putting spoonfuls in my tea, using honey instead of jam, maybe experimenting with baking…
i would not consider buying this much honey, personally, but i really appreciate your comment. it is so informative.
thank you! (sincere)
Where do you recommend wholesale purchases from?
I’d start with local apiaries and/or small/mid scale beekeepers.
The trick will be finding one that will let you buy a smaller quantity (relatively speaking - you probably don’t want multiple 55 gallon drums of honey) at near-wholesale prices.
This might be tough, because small scale (hobbyist or side-gig) beekeepers often charge a premium because they’re not producing a lot, and value the hard work they put into what they did get.
On the flip side, larger outfits will likely already have contracts with a reseller, and may not want to bother with selling a mere 50-100 lbs as a one-off.
A good place to ask around might be a local beekeeping club/meetup. It would at least let you meet some of your local beeks, and maybe determine which are retail-only and which do wholesale.
You da MBP
most beeluable player?
He is V.I.B.
If storage space were free and limitless, maybe. Honey keeps forever in principle but that doesn’t mean your barrel could never be contaminated, broken into by bugs or rodents, etc.
Personally, I enjoy buying different varieties of honey, especially as it’s a craft which has been getting more popular and really taking off in “local food” culture. I don’t want to commit to a barrel of any one thing, and I’m also fairly sure that the honey I could buy in a barrel is not going to be the one I’d most enjoy, but some over filtered, over processed stuff.
So I say nay.
Sure, buy the 50 lbs of honey now. Convert it to mead. Profit.
A quick search suggests that the average American uses about 1.3 pounds of honey per year.
I think this is a case of people not eating honey and bringing the average way down.
My current SO puts honey in her tea and goes though about a pound and a half per month or about 18lbs per year.
It might sound like a lot but 24oz over an average of 30 days is less than an Oz of honey per day or 2 tablespoons across 4 cups of tea every day.I’ll balance her out - zero most years. It doesn’t taste good enough to start adding sweetener to things
Thank you, I’m one of these people, as are most of the folks I know. I’ll eat maybe a couple of teaspoons of honey per year, tops. And I cook 3 meals a day at home, from scratch, every day.
Honey is great, I love bees, but I don’t actually eat much honey.
The average added sugar consumption for American adults is about 70g per day, which works out to be 25.6 kg (56.2 lbs) per year. People can shift their source of sweetener and consume a dramatically higher amount of honey without necessarily having a diet that is all that different from the national average.
Bulk honey is significantly less expensive if you buy direct from an apiary, and in bulk. It never expires (but can go bad! you still have to store it properly) and will last longer than you if you treat it good.
Go for it. The price of honey is bound to just go up.
As a kid we had a neighbor that ran a bee-brothel and had hives all over the region. Since his hives would just sit on un-used corners of farmland, he would offer some honey annually as ‘rent’. (He was also generous with his boat so a couple waterskiing trips were also on the table).
We (2 parents, 4 kids) would get a 5 gallon can of honey every other year or so.
That has been over 45 years now and my father is still working through that supply. We put it in sealed mason jars and it has remained good all this time.
Honey can technically expire. If it crystalizes, some portions of it can become more diluted, leading to a low enough osmotic pressure for bacteria and fungi to exist. If you do buy in bulk, check your local universities. One in my area does honeybee research and sells bulk honey from their bee lab at cheaper prices than any of the private beekeepers. I use it to make mead.
Honey can expire if not stored right.
So, if it’s left?
God damn that works on so many different levels!
That’s an old wives’ tale. Honey never spoils, it crystallizes. All you need to do is heat it to liquify. 3000 year old honey was found in an Egyptian tomb, and was still edible.
https://realrawhoney.co.uk/blogs-real-raw-honey-honey-in-ancient-egypt/
I misunderstood “poor storage” as a temperature. Sure, if you don’t seal the container and an abundance of moisture is able to enter, that could cause spoilage. So if OP doesn’t keep their honey in a bucket in the basement they should be fine.
if OP doesn’t keep their honey in a bucket in the basement they should be fine
First time on the internet huh? Pretty good odds OP is right now trying to figure out where to store that 5-gallon bucket of honey he just purchased, and that basement is looking mighty tempting.
“I bought a lot of pudding”
I tried to get a gif of Adam Sandler saying that in Punch Drunk Love but I couldn’t find the exact scene I wanted so you get this explanation instead
