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?
Sure you could. But I’ll offer a different perspective
All honey tastes different from different producers and areas, you’ll be missing out on some wonderful honey flavors if you buy that much in bulk. If it’s purely for sweetening, sure fine, do it. But if you want the flavor of honey, check out a farmers market and see what you’d be missing out on with bulk.
The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.
I’ve also heard that honey helps to confer resistance to allergies to things that were in the area where the honey was made. As such, OP might be missing out on environmental defense by not diversifying.
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.
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.
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?
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.
So it’s a good bet, got it.
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.
Honey can change consistency, depending on how it is packaged and stored. In addition, you have to consider the cost and risk of storing it. But if you think the bees are going to die off, it could be a lucrative investment.
If the bees die off, you’re going to have a much bigger problem than lack of honey.
My first thought was that of the cost of storing it. You never know when something will happen and all of your effort to store it is moot. Like if a natural disaster occurs and destroys your stash, or something happens and you must leave everything behind. Not a huge deal if you only have a few years of it, but a lifetime’s worth?
Or just ants. Ants ruin plans
Also cockroaches.
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.
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.
Sure, buy the 50 lbs of honey now. Convert it to mead. Profit.
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.
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.
I clearly use more than the average amount of honey then. Most of it to make mead.
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.
A fire could destroy it, just saying 👀
That’s some very nice honey you got there, be a shame if it all burned down
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.
