If you need at least 90 percent capped frames to insure honey will keep, then how do you handle the ones that are 50 or 30 percent capped. I was thinking I could extract the uncapped honey first and then do all the capped next. Such delimas in this beekeeping. Ha.
I am far from an expert but from what I have heard you are not suppose to extract any of the uncapped honey frames(the ones that are less than 90 percent or whatever the guideline is) or it will ferment
You can leave it for the bees to eat though.
Beehappy
Someone suggested the very same thing to me. Your thinking makes sense to me.
David
It makes sense if you don't have a lot of them. If you do, I would leave them alone until the become capped or if it's close to the end of the season, swap them out with empty frames in the brood chamber if there are any.
Capping sloes down around this time of year, at least in my area (MA). I go for the 80-90% sealed cells. Sometime the honey in the unsealed cells has a moisture content less than 18%, which is acceptable. The bees just haven't finished sealing or are pretty close to doing so. If you can purchase or borrow a refractometer and check the moisture content you might be ok. Or you could do the extracting prior to decaping as stated before and then you can feed this back to the bees. One final word...If you flip the frames over and nectar starts to drip out you can be sure that it has not become sealable honey.