How's your honey looking?

[Chip Hankley]

Out of twelve supers, I only have about three that are reasonably capped for extracting. This seems a lot wetter than past mid-Augusts.

Are any of you seeing similar?

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[mar...@chicagobees.com]

That seems to be the case in northern Illinois as well. At a recent meeting of Northern Illinois Beekeepers most everyone was saying the same thing; half capped frames/supers. It's also worth noting that out of about 60 folks in attendance only 2 were having as good of a honey crop as last year or better. Everyone else's production is down compared to previous years. I don't know if there's a correlation between lower production and half capped frames or not, just sharing the info.

Marcin

Chicago

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[Matt H]

A refractometer is a useful tool for this. I pulled/extracted the last I'm planning on taking last weekend and my refractometer gave me confidence to take some uncapped frames I normally wouldn't. It also saved me from taking a frame that was ~70% capped but the uncapped portion was >25% moisture.

[Scott Johnson]

I extracted about 72 lb/6 gal from two hives (28 shallow frames) last week. I threw the honey in a closed up space (stand-up shower with sealed door) with a dehumidifier for two days just to be sure everything got brought down to a low moisture content. I'd say about 3/4 of the frames were nearly 100 percent capped and the rest were mostly capped. I figured at that ratio, I'd be fine anyway but like the insurance of two days of dehydration.

I had 10 more frames that were not capped and I left those on top of my strongest hive.

This is my first year in southern WI so I do not know if this is typical.

Scott

========================================
Scott Johnson Ph.D.

Director
Low Technology Institute

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2017-08-13 14:37 GMT-05:00 Matt H <matthew...@gmail.com>:

A refractometer is a useful tool for this. I pulled/extracted the last I'm planning on taking last weekend and my refractometer gave me confidence to take some uncapped frames I normally wouldn't. It also saved me from taking a frame that was ~70% capped but the uncapped portion was >25% moisture.

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[Diane Packett]

I have one hive, and they've stashed a lot of honey, but only four frames were capped last week. I got a gallon, which is all I need for my own use, but it was weird to see all those frames full of uncapped honey. I inspected today to see if they'd cleaned up the frames, and same thing. They've *finally* started to draw out comb on new foundation in one of the supers, and are stashing in there too.

Diane

[marvin]

I've already extracted 8 supers off of 3 hives, and have 4 more ready to go.  There were a few with substandard capping, and I just skipped those.  What I noticed was that the early spring flow was really strong, even though the weather was cool.  I had capped supers quite early this year.  But then when the alfalfa was in full bloom, things didn't really jump like normal.  Never got those 90 degree days that getting the alfalfa flow going.  I'm just going to save any partials as winter feed.  I'm pretty content with the harvest.  Not like last year but consistent with the coolness.