Some thoughts on mead and pre-industrial bee keeping

So, in a lot of mead recipes there's the direction to boil the honey with water and skim off the scum, which sterilizes it a bit and removes impurities. With modern beekeeping methods there's very little in the way of impurities, so this always seemed like a slightly redundant step to me. Until two days ago when I had to clean up a mess I let build up in a hive, and I ended up with almost 2kg of honey, and the associated wax... and a bunch of dead bees in it. Pro tip- bees are busy little creatures, and if you leave a bit of extra space on top for any reason they will build right up into it lickety-split.