Upside & Downside of Honey Harvest

[dgoodman]

Hello All,

I peered into my 4 hives today. Each has 1 shallow filled, and some frames (25%) on the second box.

What are the upsides and downsides of taking what's available? Is it better to let them keep stacking up? Does it matter?

Thanks.

DG

[Matt NY]

I heard that you can increase amount if you take it when its ready.

I have no emperical knowledge, sorry.

Matt

[dgoodman]

Hey Matt,

You're not alone on that one..."no emperical knowledge."

DG

[tecumseh]

dgoodman ask:
What are the upsides and downsides of taking what's available? Is it better to let them keep stacking up? Does it matter?

tecumseh suggest:
first thing is you need to get some idea of how much stores to leave so the girls can make the season. taking too much mean you will need to feed earlier. if you extract??? the upside is you can take some and recycle the supers, which since they are drawn tend to be reutilized much quicker than foundation. the down side of just leaving them on (at least in my mine) is that a honey plug at the top of a limited brood nest may create swarming problems. another downside is that if you take the honey too early after capping it can be excessively wet .some may like to call it green honey which simply means it has enough water content to ferment.

wish you luck and a good season.

[Tia]

I like to take it all at once because I'm lazy and don't feel like cleaning my extractor/uncapping tank, etc. more than once.

[dgoodman]

tecumseh suggest:

Tecumseh,

A couple comments about your advice:

1. The store seem a bit light compared to last year. The hive "balls" are pretty tight. Last year, they filled all of the frames in the nest. That being said, they they have filled the first honey super completely, which I thought meant they were satisfied with their own supply. Boy, I hope that makes sense.


The upside is you can take some and recycle the supers, which since they are drawn tend to be reutilized much quicker than foundation.

I love this!

If you take the honey too early after capping it can be excessively wet .some may like to call it green honey which simply means it has enough water content to ferment.

This comes as a surprise to me. I thought that once the honey was capped, the water content was uniform.

Thanks for your thoughts.

DG

[ July 17, 2006, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: dgoodman ]

[AstroBee]

Tecumseh,

You wrote:

"another downside is that if you take the honey too early after capping it can be excessively wet .some may like to call it green honey which simply means it has enough water content to ferment."

That's counter to my understanding. Once the honey is capped seems unlikely that the moisture content will change at all (perhaps a tiny tiny bit). Moisture and hence maintenance seems to be the major reasons why the bees cap it to begin with. True?