First Harvest?

[antaro]

At what point should I harvest honey from my supers?
The girls in both hives are steadily filling up the deeps with capped honey and they have expanded into the two supers (on each hive) that I have provided. No queen excluders, but definitely full frames of honey (and other frames that are also being used for brood).

I don't particularly want to continue to add supers so I was planning on taking out full super frames of honey and replacing with empty frames. Any problems with that? What is the best way to harvest a few frames at a time?

...and hypothetically speaking, if my hives don't have the 70lbs of honey in the deeps needed for winter, rather than let them starve, does it make sense to throw in super frames into the deeps to give them more? Or does that mess up temperature control too much?

[hankdog1]

anything above the 2 deeps used for brood rearing should be fine to take off.  They should have enough honey between the two deeps to last them through winter but after you take the honey off you find they are light in stores you may want to start feeding.  Sugar syrup and pollen patties will help them to put stores back up.  With what your asking about starving though most of the time it happens during spring buildup which is probably Feb. or Mar. kathyp can probably give you a closer time frame being closer then I.  Then is when you throw on syrup and pollen patties to prevent starvation and stimulate brood rearing.  As for your question about taking one frame at a time out for honey should be fine.

[Hethen57]

In the Northwest (but we probably have colder longer winter here, but similar), I winter in 2 deeps and have always had lots of honey left in the hive the next spring.  However, when it is cold, they only use the honey under the cluster and I have had hives starve with lots of honey at edges, but no honey in the middle....so what they backfill in the middle of the hive after the last brood hatches in Fall is key for survival!

If you harvest individual frames by removing and replacing with an empty, just make sure to cram the bees down into a tightly packed box by about October (it will seem too packed, but there will be lots of winter loss). That means removing empty combs or undrawn frames you added.  You should pull the boxes from over your broodnest before going into winter anyway so the bees have less space to heat.