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?
Haven’t seen this mentioned yet so:
The honey may not expire, but the container you store it in could. I’d be very concerned about plastic disintegrating and/or leeching into the honey. Glass would be better for that, but it’s also really heavy compared to plastic, so you’d need more, smaller containers instead of one giant tub.
Glass would also be better for heating it to melt crystals.
I would agree with you but I’m like 25% microplastic (and 8% regular plastic) so I figure what harm will be done has already been done.
It’s surprising that Bender has yet to say “I’m 40% plastic!”
Honey can expire if not stored right.
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.
So, if it’s left?
God damn that works on so many different levels!
Having had a 50lb bucket of honey I can tell you that honey use goes up dramatically because you say to yourself “well I have so much I can just use it for this, and that, and a little more on my toast…” and then friends come around asking for a little here and a little there. Unless you can be super disciplined in a way that I cannot, 50 pounds will not last more that a couple years.
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.
Sure, buy the 50 lbs of honey now. Convert it to mead. Profit.
Once Honey 2.0 comes out in 20 years, your stock in Honey 1.0 will be worthless :(
Just crush up Viagra in it and sell it as sex honey.
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.
I clearly use more than the average amount of honey then. Most of it to make mead.
A fire could destroy it, just saying 👀
That’s some very nice honey you got there, be a shame if it all burned down
Honey doesn’t expire but it crystalises giving it a different texture. You’d also have to check in on what happens to decades old honey
Not a lot. there was some honey in the tomb of an Egyptian mummy and they are it when they excavated him.
Do you actually eat 1.3 pounds a year tho? If so, then it does.
Yeah, then turn it into mead
Then you’d be a lot warmer and a lot happier!
Do you really want to carry your lifetime supply of honey around with you every time you move apartment?
What other foodstuffs are you going to buy your lifetime supply of? Dried goods? Tins? You could get yourself a winnebago and fill it with all your lifetime’s worth of food or something, which would make lugging it all around with you forever easier. Just hope nobody nicks it.
Carry it around? You just find a tree. Nice hollow tree and hide it in there. Everyone knows it’s how you store honey.
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.
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.
