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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #11542  by RDGBEES
 22 Jul 2021, 17:29
Hi everyone,

Today I inspected my two hives and when I lifted off my supers they were seriously heavy.

I have resisted to take too much notice of the supers until now (which may be a huge mistake). The bees have binded the top and bottom supers together as well as frames next to each other which will make it almost impossible to check whether the frames are capped.

What's should I do?

Should I leave my honey extraction a little later than usual to be sure the honey is capped?

Or should I remove each frame and accept that there will some damage and loss of Honey?

Thanks in advance
 #11543  by NigelP
 22 Jul 2021, 17:53
I'd suggest remove ASAP. Seems they have run out of room for honey storage and are stuffing it everywhere.
Next buy a honey refractometer....about a tenner on ebay...this way you can check you honey's moisture content....it should be fine from your description.
I'd use a knife to separate the frames, stick in extractor (after uncapping anything you can see) and go from there.
 #11544  by RDGBEES
 22 Jul 2021, 19:44
Thanks for the reply Nigel.

I'll purchase a refractomer tonight and check the moisture content hopefully be able to start extracting.
NigelP wrote:I'd suggest remove ASAP. Seems they have run out of room for honey storage and are stuffing it everywhere.
Next buy a honey refractometer....about a tenner on ebay...this way you can check you honey's moisture content....it should be fine from your description.
I'd use a knife to separate the frames, stick in extractor (after uncapping anything you can see) and go from there.
 #11547  by Patrick
 22 Jul 2021, 23:16
The moisture content of capped and uncapped honey can be seriously affected by ambient weather conditions.

Wet summers can sometimes mean even capped honey (which books normally take as a given is within acceptable limits i.e under 20% moisture content) is too wet to store without fermenting.

Conversely, a decent hot dry spell ( like many of us are experiencing over the last week or so) can work wonders for uncapped honey. Your only issue is if your bees are in the middle of a serious nectar flow that there is not just uncapped honey but reasonable quantities of unripened nectar coming in too.

If you have run out of supers to add but it’s still coming in then an extraction of some filled and capped combs which can be quickly returned will give them room. Last thing you want is them to run out of space and swarm now.

Line trees have only just come into flower around me, making me think the summer nectar flow could continue with into early August this year, which for my area is unusual but most welcome. I also have weight in supers, which I had almost given up on for this year.
 #11548  by JoJo36
 23 Jul 2021, 04:23
Sounds like a nice problem to have! :)
 #11551  by AdamD
 23 Jul 2021, 13:30
You should be able to prize out a super frame and see whether it's capped or not. And if the brood box is similarly stuffed or there's filled comb being drawn on the underside of the brood frames you can be fairly sure that the hive is full.
My bees have been bringing in the nectar for the past week or two and I have put extra supers on some. (Although I still have 10 or 12 supers that have not been used this year). My honey is not capped yet. Even nucs have supers on them and my Abelo mini-plus nucs are all stuffed!
After a poor (hopeless) spring this year and a below average 2020, I live in hope that the flow will continue for a while yet.