How to Store Honey: 4 Tips to Extend the Shelf Life of Honey

Bees produce honey by collecting liquid nectar from flowers. Accumulated nectar sits in a bee’s second stomach, or “crop,” where it mixes with enzymes that change its chemical makeup. Bees regurgitate this liquid state nectar from bee to bee until they eventually add it to a honeycomb. Once the digested nectar is inside the honeycombs, bees flap their wings to dry it out and seal it off—in doing so, they form a substance called beeswax.

A beehive, nest, or beekeeper’s apiary can house hundreds of thousands of beeswax cells that hold the colony’s honey storage long-term. However, humans also harvest honey for consumption. Pure honey has been a popular sweetener and natural remedy since the early days of the Greek and Egyptian empires.

Most honey names come from the type of pollen that dominates the area where producers harvest the honey. However, all forms of light honey and dark honey fall into three main categories:

1. 1. Creamed honey: Raw honey will crystalize when fructose and glucose bind to pollen, so manufacturers process creamed honey with preservatives to eliminate the chance of this crystallization or granulation. While raw honey has a golden, opaque appearance, creamed honey appears milky and thick.
2. 2. Liquid honey: Honey simple syrup or liquid honey is similar to honey in its original form before the bees seal it into their honeycombs. Unlike most forms of thick and sticky honey, liquid honey has a bright and clear appearance with little to no viscosity.
3. 3. Raw honey: Filtered and unfiltered versions of raw honey are often available at your local farmers’ market or health food grocery store. Since producers harvest raw honey through a natural process, this form will retain the most organic properties.

Consider these tips for increasing the shelf life of your jar of honey:

• Place honey in an airtight container. The best way to protect your honey from outside contamination is to transfer store-bought honey from a vendor’s original container to a lidded glass jar or airtight container. You can use plastic containers or mason jars as long as they have a tight seal that will maintain the moisture content of the honey inside the container.
• Store honey at room temperature to retain its flavor. If you want to maintain your honey’s rich flavor and prevent it from spoiling, store it in a dark place like a kitchen cabinet where it will not have to endure extreme heat or direct sunlight.
  
• Try freezing honey to avoid crystals. If you refrigerate honey, you might notice that some cooler temperatures below fifty degrees Fahrenheit can lead to crystallization. Although crystallized honey is not a sign of spoilage or fermentation, some people dislike the inconsistent granulation and crunchy texture. You can opt to freeze honey instead of refrigerating it—the temperatures of a freezer are too cold to allow crystals to form.
• Use warm water to thaw frozen honey. If you opt to store your raw honey in the freezer, always soak the glass container in warm water instead of hot water to thaw it. Otherwise, the abrupt temperature change could cause the glass to expand rapidly, possibly cracking or shattering it—and rendering your honey unusable.

Become a better chef with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by the world’s best, including Alice Waters, Gabriela Cámara, Niki Nakayama, Chef Thomas Keller, Gordon Ramsay, Yotam Ottolenghi, Dominique Ansel, and more.