Your bees do not need to "get" mites, they probably came with mites.

Have you checked, via sticky board or sugar roll, to see what levels they developed over the first summer?

Not too much time left to treat if your levels are high as the bees are already making their crucial winter bees, and soon in NW CT it will be too cold for all mite-treaments except the off-label (and not legally registered) use of OAV.

So do a mite check this week. Not seeng mites on the bodies of your bees means nothing. Test - if you haven't got the equipment to do a sticky board right away, then read about doing a sugar roll test, and do it. It doesn't kill the sampled bees. Though, truthfully, like all bee-manipulations I'm sure some do die in the rumpus. Don't put it off out of dread at discovering a problem.

Enj.

 

Looks like normal honey capping to me. The wax over honey is very thin typically.

 

Is that why the cap is so thin?

Cappings are always thin. They usually don't cap unless the honey is cured so it is unlikely the honey is "wet". It is your choice to treat or not. Most likely your colony has mites. Did you knock off the bees for the photo? I would have expected a lot more bees.

 

While that frame may have come from the upper brood chamber, from the photo it is all capped honey. It doesn't matter where the frame is - caps on honey cells all look pretty much the same.

Certainly there are cells in the brood nest that are capped more prominently, but they may be other than honey cells. A visual comparison ...

photo credit

photo credit

 

>is it possible that our hive will not get mites?

Not possible. They already have them.

>Second question about the photo: Is this wet-capped honey?

I'm not sure what you mean by "wet-capped" honey. It's capped honey. The cappings are watery looking but that is typical for Italians. Nice white dry looking cappings are typical for the darker bees.

> It looks like it has a very thin cover

That's what cappings are.

> and it's not what I would expect to see at harvest time (if this was in the super).

It is what you always get. They are only about .1mm thick. The things that affect how this capped honey looks: It has cocoons in it (was used for brood) which makes it look dark and it has watery cappings (genetic trait).