First year question?

[Cam]

Ok, I guess I should know the answer to this from all the literature IÂ’ve been reading on this stuff, but being a newbie I gotta ask.

Suppose you have a few hives that you started from packages this year in early April. Over the first few weeks you spent time opening up the brood box and checking for brood and patterns and all of that stuff. But then when the second brood box got full and you realized there were a lot of bees in those hives you decided it was time to put supers on. You really didnÂ’t think youÂ’d get any honey but heck you had to try. And wouldnÂ’t you know it after a couple of weeks theyÂ’d filled the supers. So you put on more supers and they fill those. Now itÂ’s getting to be mid to late July and the next supers seem to be still getting drawn and filled but not very fast.

About this time you read in your favorite beekeeping magazine that you should be starting to get ready for the fall rush of a major honey flow. You know check the brood, look for mites, and medicate if necessary using whatever you feel comfortable with. But on your favorite beekeeping forum the experts say if they’re making honey leave ‘em alone. Don’t touch a thing.

So here is my dilemma. Do I do a major inspection now? Should I disturb the hive enough to pull the supers and look in the brood boxes for that brood and pattern stuff again? Is it safe to have the hive open very long if there are supers sitting there with honey in them? Will I start a case of robbing? I have SBBÂ’s on these hives. Should I just put a sticky board under them and check for mites and if that looks ok leave them alone?

Any help would be great.
Cam

[iddee]

Harvest the fully capped frames of honey. In so doing, if you pay attention, you will see all that needs to be seen at this time.

The spring flow, as a rule, will be much lighter and milder honey than the fall flow. Get it off now so you can keep the two separate.

[power napper]

Our flow is still happening here yet, just nectar in the supers--only found one comb capped and was completely out of honey so "robbed" the frame today.
Probably two or three weeks yet until we extract our summer crop. Basswood still in bloom here because I checked today!

[carbide]

Our spring flow is about over here. In the next week or so I'll get around to extracting whatever the bees have in the supers. At that time I'll pull the supers and get a look at the brood boxes to see what kind of shape things are in. After extracting the honey I'll replace the supers back onto the hives and wait for the fall flow which normaly starts around mid August here.

If the hives have a serious mite problem I'll do treatments before re-installing the supers.