Honey Buckets
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Food grade buckets can be repurposed if you can find them. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
Honey Buckets
Missouri has had an excellent beekeeping season this year. Most beekeepers I know have ended up with extra bees and even more extra honey, which needs to somehow be temporarily stored.
When extracting honey, beekeepers need a food grade container to store the honey. They usually use 5 gallon food grade buckets that cost around $5 each assuming they can be found. The other challenge is that a 5 gallon bucket of honey can weigh around 60 lbs each, not easy to lift and move around.
What’s the option?
Work with a local bakery to get the food grade buckets they discard. The ones we picked up this year were frosting buckets, holding about 3 gallons of honey when in use.
In addition to being easier to lift, the smaller buckets take up less space to store. They still can serve the same purpose as those 5 gallon buckets from holding honey to collecting honey filtered from a larger food grade bucket.
The smaller buckets are easier to move after its full of honey. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
As a thank you to the bakery that saved more than 30 buckets for our local bee club, we gave the staff of 8 each a jar of local honey.
We also made sure their supervisor knew when we were going to pick them up so they weren’t stacked up waiting for us during their health inspections.
After several visits and honey discussions, there was an extra bonus. We may have a couple of beekeeping students the next time we hold classes!
