Crystallised honey: why honey sets, how to make it runny again and how to make soft set honey

Crystallised honey is honey in which part of the glucose has formed tiny crystals, turning it from a runny liquid into a firm, creamy or grainy solid. British beekeepers call it set honey. It is completely natural, it is safe to eat, and it says nothing bad about the quality of the jar. How fast it happens depends on the flowers the bees worked, the water content and the storage temperature: oil seed rape honey can set within days, while some honeys stay runny for months. You can eat it as it is, warm it gently in a water bath below about 40°C to make it runny again, or turn it into smooth soft set honey.

Why does honey crystallise?

More sugar than the water can hold

Honey is roughly four fifths sugar, mostly fructose and glucose, and usually only 16 to 18.5% water, according to the European reference data used in the table further down. Iratxe Perales, co-founder of the honey-analysis company Sonicat Systems, interviewed by CORDIS, the European Commission’s research news service, sums up what that means: honey is a supersaturated solution, holding more sugar than its water can normally keep dissolved. A supersaturated solution is unstable, and sooner or later some of the sugar leaves the solution as crystals.

Glucose sets, fructose stays runny

The two main sugars in honey behave very differently:

• glucose is the less soluble of the two, and it is glucose that crystallises;
• fructose is far more soluble. It stays liquid and holds back crystallisation.

The crystals are glucose monohydrate: each glucose molecule that crystallises takes one molecule of water with it into the crystal. That small detail matters later, because the liquid left between the crystals ends up slightly wetter than the honey was before.

What starts the crystals off

A crystal needs a starting point. Pollen grains and air bubbles act as seeds, CORDIS explains, and so do existing glucose crystals and specks of wax left from extraction. The more seed points there are, and the more evenly they are spread, the smaller and more numerous the crystals and the smoother the result. A few scattered seed points give large, gritty crystals. Beekeepers use exactly this principle to make soft set honey.

Temperature and water

Crystallisation does not run at the same speed at every temperature. A 2025 study by Polatidou and colleagues in the journal Foods places the fastest crystallisation at about 10 to 15°C. Above 18°C it slows down, and above about 30°C crystals begin to dissolve. Below 10°C it slows again, because the honey becomes so thick that the sugar molecules struggle to move. A 2021 paper by Murashova and colleagues gives a similar optimum of 7 to 15°C for the first crystals to appear.

In British terms, a cool larder or an unheated garage in spring is the perfect place to make honey set, and a centrally heated kitchen slows it down.

Water works both ways. Wetter honey dissolves glucose more easily, so it sets more slowly and more softly. In Murashova’s study, honeys with 15 to 17.7% water crystallised in an average of 7.5 weeks, against about 28 weeks for honeys with 18% water or more. Very dry honeys, below 15%, took about 15.5 weeks: they were so viscous that crystal growth was held back too.

Which honeys set fastest in the UK?

Two ratios that predict crystallisation

Laboratories predict crystallisation from two ratios:

• fructose to glucose (F/G): the higher it is, the longer the honey stays runny. Polatidou and colleagues class honeys as fast-crystallising below 1.11, medium between 1.11 and 1.33 and slow above 1.33;
• glucose to water (G/W): in the same study, a value above 2.0 points to fast, complete crystallisation and a value below 1.7 to slow crystallisation.

A honey with a low F/G and a high G/W, such as oil seed rape, will almost certainly set within weeks. A honey with a high F/G and a low G/W, such as false acacia, stays runny for a long time.

Table of honeys found in Britain

The figures below are averages from the reference descriptions of European unifloral honeys published by Livia Persano Oddo and Roberto Piro in Apidologie in 2004, based on laboratory data from several European countries. They are not British samples, but the plants are the same species.

Honey	Average F/G	Average G/W	Average water	Crystallisation	What to expect in the jar
Oil seed rape	0.95	2.37	17.0%	fast	very fine crystals, white, smooth; can set in the comb
Dandelion	0.99	2.33	16.2%	fast	very fine crystals, part of many spring honeys
Lime (linden)	1.18	1.93	16.9%	medium	variable; often sets over a few months
Ling heather	1.26	1.76	18.5%	medium	jelly-like when fresh, then large rounded crystals
Honeydew	1.25	1.61	16.1%	slow	stays runny and dark for a long time
Sweet chestnut	1.48	1.62	17.5%	slow	usually stays liquid
False acacia (black locust)	1.61	1.57	17.1%	slow	stays runny for many months

These are averages. Every batch depends on what the bees actually brought in, the year and how the honey was handled. Polatidou and colleagues found three heather honeys behaving quite differently: one, with an F/G of 1.03 and a G/W of 2.04, set fast, while the two with a G/W below 1.6 barely crystallised at all.

Oil seed rape: the honey that sets in days

Rape is the reason so much British spring honey is sold set rather than runny. Its glucose content is so high that it can crystallise in the comb before the supers come off. The British Beekeepers Association advises checking the supers for ripeness as the crop turns from yellow to green, then clearing bees by shaking and brushing rather than with a Porter escape, because without the bees’ warmth the honey sets. Extract without delay: partly set honey will not all spin out. Our guide to harvesting honey covers the method in detail.

The same fast, fine set is rape honey’s strength in the jar. It produces a pale, smooth, almost white set honey that spreads easily, and it is the classic seed honey for making soft set from other honeys.

Heather honey: a special case

Ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) honey, gathered on the moors of Scotland, Wales, northern England and the South West in August, behaves differently from every other British honey. When fresh it is thixotropic: a jelly that turns liquid when stirred and sets again when left alone. The specification for Welsh Heather Honey (Mêl Grug Cymru), registered as a protected geographical indication in March 2025, describes this texture, the skill of pressing the honey from the comb rather than spinning it, and warming to no more than 45°C only to move it for bottling. With time, ling honey also crystallises in large rounded crystals.

Because heather honey can naturally hold more water, the law allows it up to 23% water against 20% for other honey, which also makes it more prone to fermentation if stored carelessly. Bell heather (Erica cinerea) honey, sometimes mixed in, is not thixotropic.

And ordinary blossom honey?

Most local honey in Britain is a mixed “blossom honey” with no single dominant flower, and it has no fixed behaviour. A spring honey with plenty of rape, dandelion, fruit blossom and hawthorn usually sets quickly and finely. A summer honey from clover, bramble, lime and garden flowers usually sets more slowly, over weeks or months, and often with a slightly coarser grain. Look at when it was harvested and what grows near the hives: our guide to plants for bees shows what flowers when.

Is crystallised honey still good to eat?

Yes, and it is not a sign of poor quality

Iratxe Perales is unambiguous in the CORDIS interview: crystallisation is a natural process that has nothing to do with quality. The sugars, aromas and enzymes are still there; only the balance between dissolved and crystallised glucose has changed. Set honey is not “sugared”, not past its best, and not mixed with sugar.

Setting proves neither fraud nor purity

A stubborn belief holds that real honey always sets and runny honey must have been cut with syrup. It is wrong both ways. Pure false acacia honey stays runny for months, and an adulterated honey can perfectly well crystallise. Only laboratory analysis can show whether a honey is authentic, and the Food Standards Agency, working with Cranfield University, has been testing new screening methods, while warning that no single test can definitively confirm that honey is authentic. Our guide on how to choose honey explains which details on the label are worth trusting.

What about nutrition?

Set honey has exactly the same composition as runny honey: no more sugar, no more calories, no fewer nutrients. If you want to know what honey really does and does not do for your health, see our page on the health benefits of honey. One rule applies to all honey, set or runny: the NHS advises not giving honey to babies under 12 months, because it can contain bacteria that cause infant botulism.

White streaks on the side of the jar

On set honey, especially pale, fine-grained rape honey, you will sometimes see white, frosty streaks running down the glass. They are not mould and not added sugar. They come from tiny air bubbles trapped during extraction, straining or setting, and from the honey shrinking slightly away from the glass as it crystallises. Beekeepers call this “frosting”, and the SBA’s seeding sheet explains how to avoid it. It is purely cosmetic.

How do you make crystallised honey runny again?

What heat does to honey

Since glucose crystals dissolve above about 30°C, gentle warmth is all it takes. The trouble is that heat also damages what makes honey worth buying:

• enzymes such as diastase and invertase, added by the bees, break down with heat;
• aromas, the most volatile part of the flavour, are driven off;
• HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural), a compound formed slowly from the sugars, rises with heat and with time.

HMF is not dangerous at the levels found in honey, but it is the official marker of heating and age. Schedule 1 of the Honey (England) Regulations 2015, mirrored by the honey regulations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, caps HMF at 40 mg/kg for most honey (80 mg/kg for honey from regions with a tropical climate) and requires a diastase activity of at least 8 on the Schade scale, with a lower minimum of 3 for naturally low-enzyme honeys whose HMF is no more than 15 mg/kg. The same schedule says honey must not have been heated in a way that destroys or significantly inactivates its natural enzymes.

Why stay below about 40°C

There is no legal home-kitchen limit, but the advice given to British beekeepers is cautious. SRUC’s honey training module says honey should not be heated above 35°C, allows moderate heat up to 45°C for pressed honey, and warns that overheating raises HMF and destroys enzymes. For a jar at home, keeping the honey itself below about 40°C is a sensible upper limit: it is only a few degrees above the 35°C of the brood nest, so the honey sees little more than it did in the hive.

What matters is temperature multiplied by time. A 2023 study in Agronomía Mesoamericana, on honey from a stingless bee (Tetragonula laeviceps) and therefore to be read with care, shows the pattern clearly: 48 hours at 40°C raised HMF by only about 1.7 mg/kg, not a significant increase, whereas 7 hours at 70°C destroyed more than 90% of the invertase activity. The authors also found that two years of storage raised HMF more than heating did. Long and gentle beats short and fierce.

Decrystallising honey in a water bath, step by step

1. Loosen the lid. Unscrew it and rest it loosely on top, so no pressure builds up.
2. Fill a pan or bowl with warm water at about 40 to 45°C, checked with a kitchen or jam thermometer, up to the level of the honey in the jar.
3. Stand the jar in the water, making sure no water can get in.
4. Keep it warm. Top up with warm water from the kettle, mixed to the right temperature, or put the pan on the lowest setting of the hob. The water should never simmer.
5. Stir now and then with a clean, dry spoon to spread the heat and break up lumps.
6. Be patient. Allow a few hours for a 454 g (1 lb) jar. Coarse, hard crystals take longer than fine ones.
7. Take the jar out when no crystals remain, dry it, and screw the lid back on once the honey has cooled to room temperature.

Beekeepers dealing with 30 lb buckets use a warming cabinet: an insulated box with a low-wattage heater and a thermostat. The principle is the same, with a controlled low temperature over one or more days depending on the volume.

Methods to avoid

• The microwave. It heats unevenly and fast: parts of the jar go well above 40°C while other parts are still solid.
• Boiling water or a pan directly on the hob. The honey scorches, darkens and takes on a caramel taste.
• Repeated warming. Every cycle adds a little HMF and removes a little aroma. Only warm what you will use in the next few weeks, and decant large tubs into smaller jars first.

Will it set again?

Almost certainly. Some seed crystals survive, and honey remains supersaturated. Warmed honey often sets again sooner and with a coarser grain than the first time, because the new crystallisation starts off unevenly.

How do you make soft set honey at home?

The principle: lots of tiny crystals

Soft set honey, also sold as creamed honey, is simply honey whose crystallisation has been steered. You give it a large number of very fine seed crystals, stir them in evenly, then keep it at the temperature where crystals form fastest. The result is millions of tiny crystals, too small to feel on the tongue, and a texture that spreads like soft butter.

The method was worked out scientifically by Elton Dyce at Cornell University in the United States, who patented it in 1935. His patent describes seeding honey with about 5% of finely crystallised honey, 3 to 10% in practice, and holding it at about 57°F (14°C) to obtain a fine-grained, fondant-like product. British beekeepers still use the same principle today.

The beekeeper’s method

The Scottish Beekeepers Association’s seeding data sheet is a good UK reference for larger batches:

1. Melt all coarse crystals in the bulk honey at 50 to 52°C, strain it through a 200 micron cloth and cool it to 30°C.
2. Warm a fine-grained set honey, such as oil seed rape or clover, to 30°C without melting it, and stir it in at 10% of the bulk.
3. Hold at 25°C for 24 hours so that air bubbles rise, then let it set at 14°C. Jarred honey should set within a week; store at about 10°C.

The 50 to 52°C stage is higher than you would use for a jar at home. It dissolves every coarse crystal in a large batch, and it is kept short and controlled in a warming cabinet.

The kitchen version

For a single 454 g jar or a 1 kg tub, you can work more gently:

1. Choose your seed. Use a honey that has already set very finely: a jar of local rape honey or a bought soft set honey with a mild taste.
2. Weigh about 10%. That is the proportion used both by Polatidou and colleagues (10 g of creamed honey per 100 g of liquid honey) and by the SBA. For 1 kg of honey, use about 100 g of seed.
3. Start from runny honey. If your honey has already set coarsely, warm it in a water bath first, below 40°C, until the crystals have gone, then let it cool to room temperature. Seed stirred into warm honey would simply melt.
4. Stir gently. Mix the seed in slowly with a spatula, without whisking, so you do not beat in air. In the 2025 study the mix was stirred for 15 minutes at the lowest speed.
5. Keep it cool, at about 14°C. A cool larder, an unheated room or a garage in spring or autumn usually sits near this temperature. Avoid the fridge, which is too cold.
6. Stir again once or twice a day for the first few days, slowly, for a few minutes, while the honey turns paler and thicker.
7. Jar it while it still pours, when it has turned opaque and pearly but still runs off the spoon. In the 2025 study, the viscosity of the fastest honeys rose sharply over the first nine days and then levelled off.
8. Leave the jars somewhere cool until they are firm. They then stay soft and spreadable at room temperature.

Which honeys cream well?

Fast and medium setting honeys give the best results: rape, spring blossom honeys, clover, and many mixed summer honeys. Creaming is also the best way to rescue a honey that has set rock hard or gritty: warm it until the crystals dissolve, then reseed it with a fine honey. Honeys rich in fructose, such as false acacia or sweet chestnut, cream poorly and tend to stay half liquid. Heather honey is usually left as it is, or as cut comb.

What the label can say

The Honey (England) Regulations 2015, and their equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, list the names reserved for honey, and “set”, “soft set” and “creamed” are not among them. Trading Standards guidance on Business Companion allows additional descriptive words alongside the name as long as they do not mislead, so “Set Honey” or “Soft Set Honey” is a normal, accurate description. The important rule is the other one: if any additive or ingredient has been added, the product cannot be called honey. A soft set honey is 100% honey, with no butter, cream or anything else.

Why does some honey never set?

Naturally runny honeys

A honey that stays clear is not suspect if it is naturally rich in fructose. From the table above, that includes:

• false acacia (black locust), often imported from central and eastern Europe, with an average F/G of 1.61;
• sweet chestnut, with an average F/G of 1.48;
• honeydew honeys, from aphids on lime, oak or sycamore, which stay liquid but very thick.

Honey kept runny by processing

Other honeys stay runny because they have been processed. Very fine filtration removes pollen, wax and air bubbles, so there are fewer seed points and the honey sets later. Heating dissolves existing crystals and seed points: Polatidou and colleagues note that it removes crystallisation nuclei but raises HMF and lowers diastase activity. A supermarket squeezy honey that is still perfectly clear months after packing has usually been warmed and filtered to keep it that way.

That is legal within the compositional limits, and the label may tell you more. In England, Wales and Scotland (regulation 12 of the Honey (Scotland) Regulations 2015), “filtered honey” is still a reserved name, and Business Companion explains that honey filtered so finely that a significant amount of pollen is removed must be sold as “filtered honey”, not simply “honey”. Northern Ireland has diverged: its Breakfast Foods (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026, in force since 14 June 2026, removed that description from its honey rules, alongside new rules requiring blends to list every country of origin with percentages. If you want unheated, lightly strained honey, buy from a local beekeeper and ask. The extraction and straining steps are described in our page on harvesting honey.

How to keep honey runny for longer

If you prefer honey that pours:

• choose a fructose-rich honey: false acacia, sweet chestnut or a dark honeydew;
• store it warm rather than cool: crystallisation slows clearly above about 18°C, so a cupboard in a heated room works better than a cold larder, but keep it away from the cooker, radiators and sunny windowsills;
• avoid seeding it by accident: use a clean, dry spoon, and never top up a runny jar with the last of a set one.

How do you recognise fermented honey?

Water is the enemy

Honey keeps so well because it contains too little free water for microbes to grow. The measure that matters is water activity (aw). Zamora and Chirife (Food Control, 2006) note that an aw below 0.60 is enough to stop the growth of osmophilic yeasts, the only microbes able to ferment something as sugary as honey.

British law caps water at 20% for most honey and 23% for heather honey. In practice, fermentation risk starts well below the legal limit. An article on refractometers by Hanna Bäckmo, reprinted in Bee Culture from The Irish Beekeeper, gives the thresholds beekeepers work to: below 17% water honey does not ferment; at 18% it does not ferment unless yeasts are very numerous; above 19% there is a definite risk; and from 20% upwards yeasts multiply freely.

Why setting can trigger fermentation

This is often overlooked. When glucose crystallises, it takes water with it into the crystal, so the liquid left between the crystals becomes more dilute. Zamora and Chirife measured 49 Argentinian honeys before and after crystallisation and found an average rise in water activity of 0.034. Some honeys that were safe as liquid moved into the risk zone once they had set.

That explains why a thin liquid layer sometimes forms on top of set honey. It is not the white frosting described above but a real separation, and a sign the honey holds a little too much water. A slightly damp honey, taken off before it was fully capped or stored in a humid kitchen, is most exposed.

Signs that cannot be mistaken

What you notice	Normal crystallisation	Fermentation
Look	even paste, grainy or creamy	froth, bubbles on top, a liquid layer that fizzes
Smell	normal honey smell	sour, winey, yeasty or alcoholic
Taste	the usual honey taste	sharp, tangy, slightly alcoholic
Lid	normal	sometimes domed, honey seeping out
What to do	nothing, or warm it gently	do not eat it as it is

Honey that has only just started to ferment is not dangerous as such, but it has lost its quality. UK law bars honey that has begun to ferment from sale as table honey: it can only be sold as baker’s honey, for cooking or as an ingredient. At home, slightly fermented honey can still go into baking. Clearly fermented honey belongs in the bin, unless you want to put it to deliberate use: controlled fermentation is how mead is made, though starting from good honey gives a far better drink.

Does honey go off?

Best before, not use by

Honey carries a best before date, not a use by date. Business Companion confirms that prepacked honey must carry a best before or best before end date, while honey sold loose, or packed and sold directly by the producer, does not need one. No law fixes how long that date should be: the packer chooses it.

GOV.UK’s guidance on food labelling explains the difference: a best before date tells you when the food might start to lose quality, and food is usually safe to eat after it, while a use by date is about safety. For honey kept sealed and dry, passing the best before date does not make it unsafe. It simply ages: it darkens, loses some aroma and builds up HMF. The 2023 Indonesian study, despite its limits, gives an idea of scale: an unheated honey went from 3.5 to almost 35 mg/kg of HMF over two years of storage. That is why an old jar can eventually exceed the 40 mg/kg limit for table honey while still being perfectly edible.

How to judge an old jar

• It has set: normal, still good.
• It has darkened and tastes stronger, slightly toffee-like: it has aged; still edible and ideal for cooking.
• It smells sour, froths or tingles on the tongue: it has fermented; do not eat it as it is.
• There is mould on the surface: rare, and a sign that water got in; throw it away.

How should you store honey?

Temperature, light and moisture

Honey keeps well with three simple rules: a tight lid, a dry place and a steady temperature. The table below summarises the effect of each storage place, based on the temperature ranges given by Polatidou and colleagues and the SBA.

Where	Typical temperature	Effect on crystallisation	Advice
Fridge	3 to 5°C	slows almost to a halt, but honey becomes very hard	avoid
Cool larder, garage, unheated room	10 to 15°C	fastest crystallisation	ideal for making soft set; not for keeping honey runny
Kitchen cupboard	18 to 22°C	slower crystallisation, coarser crystals	the best everyday compromise
Airing cupboard, warm room	25 to 30°C	crystallisation held back	keeps honey runny but ages it faster over time
By the cooker, radiator or sunny window	above 30°C	crystals dissolve	avoid: aroma, enzymes and HMF all suffer

Two further precautions:

• Always close the jar tightly. Honey is hygroscopic: it absorbs moisture from the air, which raises its water content and opens the door to fermentation. It also picks up smells easily.
• Keep it out of the light, which speeds up loss of aroma and darkening. A closed cupboard is better than an open shelf in the sun.

Small everyday habits

• Use a clean, dry spoon, never one that has just stirred a cup of tea or been in someone’s mouth: water and crumbs bring moisture and yeasts.
• Keep soft set honey at room temperature rather than somewhere warm: above about 25 to 30°C it softens and can separate.
• If you buy a 30 lb bucket or a large tub from a beekeeper, decant it into smaller jars straight away, before it sets. You will then only ever have to warm one jar at a time.

Frequently asked questions

Is crystallised honey still safe to eat?

Yes. Crystallisation is a natural physical change: some of the glucose in the honey comes out of solution as tiny crystals. The sugars, flavour and enzymes are all still there, and the honey is no less safe. It is not a sign that the honey is old, fake or spoilt. Only a sour or yeasty smell, froth on the surface or a fizzy, tangy taste should worry you, because those point to fermentation.

How do I make set honey runny again?

Loosen the lid and stand the jar in a pan or bowl of warm water, keeping the honey itself below about 40°C, and stir now and then with a dry spoon. A 454 g (1 lb) jar usually takes a few hours. Avoid the microwave and boiling water: they overheat parts of the jar, darken the honey and destroy enzymes. Expect the honey to set again in the following weeks or months.

Why has my local honey set so quickly?

Probably because the bees worked oil seed rape. Rape honey is rich in glucose and low in water, so it can set within days of extraction, sometimes in the comb before the beekeeper takes the frames off. That is why so much British spring honey is sold as set or soft set honey. Summer honeys with lime, clover and bramble usually set more slowly, over weeks or months.

What is the difference between set honey and soft set honey?

Set honey is honey that has crystallised on its own, and its texture depends on the honey: fine and smooth for rape, coarser for some summer honeys. Soft set, also sold as creamed honey, is honey whose crystallisation the beekeeper has controlled by stirring in about 10% of a finely set honey and keeping it at around 14°C. It is still 100% honey, with nothing added.

Should honey be kept in the fridge?

No. A fridge does not make honey safer, and cold storage makes it hard and difficult to spoon. Crystals form fastest between about 10 and 15°C, and below about 5°C honey becomes so thick that the process slows to a halt, but you are left with a rock-hard jar. A kitchen cupboard at room temperature, away from the cooker and out of the sun, is the best place for it.

Does honey go off?

Honey sealed and kept dry keeps for years. UK law requires prepacked honey to carry a best before date, which is about quality, not safety. With time honey darkens, loses aroma and builds up HMF, a compound that rises with age and heat. Honey that has taken in moisture can ferment, though. Throw away honey that smells sour or alcoholic, froths, or shows mould.

Why is there a liquid layer on top of my set honey?

When glucose crystallises it takes some water with it, but the liquid left between the crystals ends up slightly wetter. In a honey that was already a little damp, this thin liquid can rise to the top. It is a warning sign rather than a fault: if it smells normal, stir it back in and use the jar soon. If it smells sour or froths, the honey has started to ferment.

Does honey that never sets mean it is fake?

No, and set honey is no proof of purity either. Some pure honeys, such as acacia (false acacia or black locust) honey, stay runny for many months because they hold much more fructose than glucose. Honey that has been very finely filtered or heated also sets later. Only a laboratory can tell whether honey has been adulterated, which is why the Food Standards Agency is researching new testing methods.

Sources

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5. Determination of water activity change due to crystallization in honeys from Argentina (Zamora and Chirife, Food Control, 2006), Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, institutional repository
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