How do I know when the season's over?

[piccioni]

Hello all

So, I've taken my second harvest off of my first hive, first season. I may have another 2 gallons of honey, after taking 1 1/2 gallon already.

Obviously, my first year have been a lucky one. Well, I had to be lucky at something at least once ....

Now, I figure pretty soon the season is going to come to an end. My questions are:

How do I know when its time to wind things down?

When I remove my honey super, what do I do with partially filled frames?

When I remove the honey super and the queen excluder, the hive is going to shrink. What happens to all the spare bees?

By the way, one thing I learned from my first harvest was that I don't like cranking my extractor. Not hard work, but it keeps me tied up. So I spent about $35 on misc spare parts & motorized it. Rube Goldberg would have been proud!

[Michael Bush]

>How do I know when its time to wind things down?

You won't. The bees will wind things down. But a sudden rain can cause a bloom and a short honey flow from now until at least the first hard frost.

>When I remove my honey super, what do I do with partially filled frames?

I leave them on until I get a frost. Then, if they still aren't capped, I stack them up and let them dry. I just judge them by eye, but you can get equipment to measure moisture content. I look for it to be thick like honey.

>When I remove the honey super and the queen excluder, the hive is going to shrink. What happens to all the spare bees?

Which is partly why I would leave that last super on until the first frost. The other reasons is you may get another short flow yet.

>By the way, one thing I learned from my first harvest was that I don't like cranking my extractor. Not hard work, but it keeps me tied up. So I spent about $35 on misc spare parts & motorized it. Rube Goldberg would have been proud!

When buying a new one, I highly recommend spending the extra money for a motorized one. It really makes a big difference. Harvest is a lot of work without having to crank the extractor too.