Next year, I would have supers off by August 1st so fall mite treatments can begin.
All of the honey in supers should be in your upper brood box for winter feed.
The next honey flow is months away.
Ask around with your locals.
My $0.02

 

How badly do you want honey, and what is below the supers?

It appears that there is a nectar source nearby, as the colony has been putting up honey. Possibly it robbed a weaker colony.

You can take the super for honey if you want.

Ask around how much food you need to leave for winter in your area. It varies quite a bit. I am guessing your winters are short and mild sO you can probably winter in one deep.

Some bees put everything in the super and leave nothing below. Some put everything below the excluder. So you need to look.

Even if there is no food below the excluder, you can take the honey if you wish. You will need to feed is all. Right now you don't know if you need to feed or not.

My first year, one hive produced 60 pounds of honey, all in the supers. I took it all and fed them 2:1 syrup and they wintered fine on that.

Syrup is $0.50 per pound, while honey is $10.00 per pound.

I would guess that 40 pounds would be enough for them to winter on, but it depends on local conditions, and also on what kind of bees you have. You can figure 5 pounds of honey in a full deep frame. They will eat most of it between. Ow and December, not so much when it is cold.

One thing which is helpful is to make a honkin' big sugar cube and put it on top of the frames with a shallow or medium box as a collar. You can check from time to time and see if they are eating it, and replace it if needed. Ivusually put a 5 pound cube on my hives, just for peace of mind. Bees winter pretty well on just sugar.

There are recipes for sugar blocks on beesource, but basically mix a little water with a lot of sugar and let it dry.

But the main thing, find out from tour local beekeepers how much food they will need, and make sure that they have enough.

 

I didn’t realize I can extract uncapped honey. If it’s not capped do I have to do anything else with it or just extract as usual?

the hives have all go to be 50-100 lbs, this one in particular is the heaviest and I don’t plan on taking anything else. It should be okay through winter I imagine.

 

If you decide to take the honey, keep it in dry places, not outside. Uncapped honey on the hive is usually no higher in moisture than capped honey, but it picks up moisture very quickly in a high humidity environment. It will go from 15% to 21% overnight if left outdoors. Your location is probably dryer than mine, but nighttime humidity can approach 100% most places

 

Hi All,

I’ve got three hives in Northern California and am trying to figure out when to pull the last super.

This is a question that needs asked ONLY to people in your local area. When to <do pretty much anything> is so regionally specific, that the answer from somewhere else will almost certainly be a wrong answer.

Join a local club. That is your resource for information.