I pulled a five gallon bucket with about four gallons of honey out of the honey heater and took it to the strainer with the intention of getting it ready to bottle. The strainer was already set up on top of a five gallon bucket with about two and half gallons of honey in it. I scraped the wax that had settled to the top of the heated honey. I then proceeded to strain the honey and was concentrating on the process when I looked down and saw honey flowing on the floor. “Oh Man! What’s wrong?” I had poured about two gallons of honey on the floor.

I had forgotten that I had put a lid on the bucket of honey and then placed the strainer on top. This happened about a week ago and I did not check to make sure that everything was ready to strain. Now I had a mess to clean up. This has happened only three times in the eight years I have been bottling honey. The first two times was while I was extracting into five gallon buckets. This time was the first time for straining.

I scraped all the loose honey up, then I poured hot water on the floor to help dilute the honey. After waiting for about 30 minutes, I got my shop wet-vac and vacuumed up the water, then I used hot water & soap and started mopping up. It seems that when I have a mess like this one, I manage to spread the sticky stuff everywhere.

Cookie sheets are good items to place your buckets and bottles in when straining and bottling honey. It keeps the overspills in a contained area, but as you can imagine, cookie sheets didn’t help in this case. There will be times that every cautionary measure that is taken will not be enough for stupidity. Only when one thinks before starting a job, will the spillovers and accidents be held to a minimum.

Experience is a hard teacher. It gives the test first, and the lesson later.