Just out of curiosity:
What would happen if you harvested a frame of honey that wasn't fully capped?
I know that uncapped honey doesn't store, but would it spoil the whole bunch?
What if I harvest a frame that is 99% capped, but has a few uncapped cells?
My rule of thumb is if its at least 75% capped its most likely harvestable. I haven't had any fermentation issues abiding by that rule.
...JP
In addition to JP's ("The Man") rule of thumb, do the shake test. If the uncapped honey drips out, it isn't ready yet. If it does not drip out, extract and enjoy!
All makes sense to me!
Thanks, folks!
...on the same topic, when using plastic foundation (which I am), I assume it is legit to harvest frames that are partial capped, partial brood by simply scraping around the brood? Is there a reason that would be no good? (crush and strain by the way).
Huh???? Don't take any honey that also has some brood on it. That would be counter to 'life' which can spell death for your bees.
thomas
You can probably scrape around the brood, just be careful to scrape carefully and return the brood very soon to the hive. It isn't usual to harvest from around the brood. I did a little(2 out of 150 frames), cutting around some drone comb that I was planning on freezing anyway, but if there is more than a few worker brood cells then I won't.
And you should only try this if the bees have put a little brood in the honey supers, if this is in the brood boxes, I wouldn't recommend it.
I am only speaking of super frames (again, no excluder used) in which 80% of the frame is capped honey, and there is a small area of capped brood in the middle. Given enough time, the brood would hatch and the bees would reclaim the entire frame for honey.
I use plastic frames so I am just scraping the capped honey off of the frame for crush and strain. It would be easy to avoid the brood and leave it intact.
Why not put an excluder on now, wait for everyone to hatch, then extract? Or is your extraction window pretty short?
I honestly don't know what my extraction window is.
I could definitely throw the excluder on, but am not sure if the queen would get stuck in a super.
When I remove the honey frames, I try to wait as much as possible until they are all capped (or a good percentage of those).
However, sometimes this does not happen.
I check with the dripping test (if it drips, there is too much water). If not, I check with the refractometer and I leave it inside a closed space with a dehumidifier until it reaches 17-18 water %.
I'm not sure it is okay, but I've read about others doing this.