I think I found the answer, for anyone interested in producing the highest-quality possible honey oil. This page and flash movie carefully explains the steps:

Column Chromatography

So the best procedure would be to:

  • Run the cannabis through a Soxhlet extractor using hexane as your solvent (easier, healthier, safer, and more efficient/selective at extracting THC than butane or other alternatives).
  • Process the result of the extraction with a rotary evaporator, sometimes called a rotovap for short.
  • Process the result of the evaporation with column chromatography, stacking the column, from top to bottom with: sand, silica gel, sand, cotton. Add hexane to the top of the sand before you add the honey oil as a buffer. Attach a syringe to the bottom of the column to pull the oil through.
  • Process the result of this once again through the rotovap to remove the hexane.


What you have at the end of this process should theoretically be a somewhat reduced, but extremely pure, clean, and potent honey oil.

Silica gel is kind of expensive, but you can find it at electronics stores. A bonus is that apparently it should work pretty well for curing; if you threw a packet into a mason jar with the bud it should absorb the moisture as it comes out of the bud. Much more exact than "open the lid every once in a while".