[Broke-T]

Got a few questions on pulling honey. This year we have about 30 hives in production and another 80 or so splits building up into there second deeps. Most of the 30 have 2 to 3 medium honey supers full but not capped. Middle frames will be capped, outside frames will be 0 to 1/2 capped. Light periodic flows still going on.

Right now we are hand picking capped frames to extract, but that is time consuming. We would like to pull, extract, and replace supers to cut down on number needed, but thats not working to well right now.

Do Ya'll pull and replace or wait and pull all supers at end of season?

While watching videos on you tube I see lots of frames being uncapped that are only half capped, how do you keep moisture down so you don't ferment honey?

Johnny

 

[fish_stix]

The bees don't fill the cells and then fan the moisture out! And, they don't generally cap cells that aren't full. It's an ongoing process. Most of that uncapped honey will have the right moisture content. If you reach the end of the flow and have uncapped honey left are you going to leave it in the hive? I don't. Might wait a few days to give it some curing time, but it's going into a barrel. Recommend you buy yourself a refractometer so you can test it for moisture.

 

[Countryboy]

Put a couple empty supers of drawn comb below the open honey. The bees will cap off the honey in the top supers and move down to start working on the bottom supers.