First time I have encountered jellified honey and it was quite an experience, have to thank @JeffH for his Youtube clip on this very subject… made the job of filtering this stuff a little less stressful. Never thought I would get this in Sydney. Fortunately, it wasn’t in the Flow frames but I had to really spin the extractor to get it out.
Whilst I am waiting for the Active testing results, I am thinking to cream the honey similar to what the New Zealand beekeepers do to improve the consistency and make it more liquid. Has anyone ever looked into this or have any ideas on how it is done?
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how’s the taste? Also what is the water content, have you tested? I had some honey a few months ago that was just 14%, my mum tried to cream it but it would never set- it did turn creamy but stayed kind of liquid. It wasn’t jelly though. Be interesting to hear the test results. I have hives in the Adelaide hills that have quite a bit of tea-tree near them and I will send some off to be tested (if we ever get a flow this year!)
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Hi Jack,
The taste is actually good, although it does feel rather odd as the jelly rolls across your tongue. Haven’t tested the water content as yet but its quite thick so I am not too worried.
Will be sending off some samples for ‘activity’ testing this week, just about to extract another batch from a different site a few kilometres up the road so I wanted to keep them all together.
This is what I have seen the Manuka industry do with theirs, I’m curious as to whether they use a creamed honey seed or something else.
Well, if you do get jellybush you’ll know, its very difficult to extract. I thought it was crystallised at first so I dumped the entire box from the extractor straight into a bucket to leave to settle and strain… little did I know, it was never going to strain. 
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What is that second picture of?
Maybe that jelly consistency is a selling point? AKA people know it’s genuine Jelly Bush honey. 
Thats the jellied honey from the cells, how it came out, then after it was pushed through the sieve it turned into the first photo. Weird stuff…
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Ah okay. I wonder how it compares in structure and quality to “normal” honey. I will wait with bated breath until your test results come back.
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@Rodderick I have to admit that I have steered away from Jelly Bush because of lack of knowledge about it. There is some locations of it here and look forward to learning more about it.
Cheers
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I don’t blame you @Peter48, after visiting another site in the same area I now have a couple of hundred kilo’s of the stuff to extract, it better be ‘active’ 
. So glad I didn’t have the Flow hive out there, thats one advantage of living near the coast is that the honey is quite runny.
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Your hard labour may pay off with a high payload after your test results come back, and they show high methylglyoxal rates.
https://www.welcometocountry.org/indigenous-jelly-bush-honey-the-most-powerful-honey-in-the-world/
Maybe you can have a look on some NZ sites (or AU) about Manuka honey extraction (in case they have an easier extraction technique).
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Hi Rodderick, this is just a thought: I was thinking if your jellybush honey does come back with a good reading, a good idea would be to put the stickies back into colonies that aren’t collecting any. It’s a kind of natural antibiotic for the bees. I’m certain that it’s helped my bees.
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That’s a good thought really. It may actually fight an AFB infection, but at the same time one could transfer spores unknowingly from one hive to another.
I wonder if any studies have been done if active leptospermum nectar holds off the development of an AFB infection despite a high spore count.
Wish my little beelab had the resources to test these things.
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I think the main dilemma will be that AFB is fungal and honey seems to have little effect on destroying the spores. They are just so bulletproof.
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AFB is bacterial. The term ‘spores’ is a little confusing.
Indeed, but there are several spore-forming bacteria, including AFB, Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium tetani and Bacillus anthracis to name a few. Their main feature is resistance to adverse conditions, such as heat, cold and lack of food. They also tend to be viable for many years once in spore form, which is why there is a such a concern among beekeepers for AFB infections. 
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I think I owe you an apology, AFB is indeed bacterial… and those spores, how do you kill them? It seems extreme heat or gamma radiation is the only method we have to stop it.
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Even Doug Purdie stated AFB is fungal on this ABC bee show and nobody noticed.
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I think the confusion stems from the well-known thought that honey kills bacteria… and that AFB has spores so it must be fungal like chalkbrood.
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