The bees know when it is ready for capping. moisture, ph and other things they know and will cap it when its ready. Kinda like fine wine or aged bourbon. They may want to feed off the cells and not be bothered with capping. Only the bees know.
They also won't cap frames that have cells that are not full. So if you put a drawn frame on at the end of the season and the flow stops when they have the cells half full, I haven't seen them cap those frames.
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