Generally, once the bees cap it, you can harvest it anytime. If you're making comb honey, you'll want to remove it as soon as it's capped or the white cappings will become travel stained.
If you are extracting your honey, you can leave the supers on until the end of the season if you like. It's better to do all the extracting at once as cleanup is a pain. But there are several reasons why you may want to extract earlier.
1-Don't have enough empty supers on hand to contain the entire crop
2-Want to separate the types of honey
3-Something happens to the hive population and they are unable to keep out the wax moth (although they tend to prefer brood comb they can do a lot of damage throughout the hive in a short period of time - don't ask me how I know)
4-Hives may become top heavy and unstable in a strong wind if supers are stacked too tall. Besides while empty supers may be easy to throw on top, when they're full, they're much heavier and can be difficult to take off.
If you are extracting your honey, you can leave the supers on until the end of the season if you like. It's better to do all the extracting at once as cleanup is a pain. But there are several reasons why you may want to extract earlier.
1-Don't have enough empty supers on hand to contain the entire crop
2-Want to separate the types of honey
3-Something happens to the hive population and they are unable to keep out the wax moth (although they tend to prefer brood comb they can do a lot of damage throughout the hive in a short period of time - don't ask me how I know)
4-Hives may become top heavy and unstable in a strong wind if supers are stacked too tall. Besides while empty supers may be easy to throw on top, when they're full, they're much heavier and can be difficult to take off.
