A pretreated titanium silicalite with MFI structure (TS-1) catalyst which has been pretreated with methanol, and then optionally filtered and optionally air-dried to form a pretreated activated TS-1 catalyst. The activated TS-1 may be used in an epoxidation reaction with no additional methanol added and has equivalent activity to TS-1 used with large excesses of methanol. By removing the need for additional methanol during the reaction, the losses of epichlorohydrin from solvolysis are minimized significantly.