when is too early to take honey from supers?

[towson joe]

Having a great spring in these parts (Baltimore) and I have two supers full and capped on two seperate hives. Each hive also has two other supers in progress. Each hive has a total of four supers.

Question: Can I take the capped supers now and extract then put back on hives? If I do, should they go above or below the supers that I have not extracted?

Bee Sweet!
Towson Joe

[Finsky]

Question: Can I take the capped supers now and extract then put back on hives? If I do, should they go above or below the supers that I have not extracted?

It is better to extract and give back to hives. Allways put new boxes between brood area and honey.

It seems that  2+2  supers are not enough to your hive. If you have one box capped, you should have 2 supers more under capped box.

You should look, what is going on in deeps. I beleive that they are quite full too honey and capped. It is danger that colonies want to swarm soon if they have not enough room for brood.

If you have  4-5 frame in brood deep honey and pollen, you need third deep. Then lifht full frame supp and put foundations in second box.

I hope that you have in both hive 2 brood boxes.

Tseck how much you have brood. If hive have 1,5 deep full of brood frames your hive will need  5 langstrotm box or 2 L +4-5 medium supers.

If your all brood are in one box, you should need  2 L deep and 3-4 mediums.

When you have good honey flow dont ever let things go so tight that hive is full. Always you need room for new nectar in lowest deep. Otherwise hive swarms and stops working. They store honey into brood area and it not promise good.

So get new boxes and foundations and try more supers.

[towson joe]

These two hives are well estblished and plenty of brood and food in deeps.

Instead of taking honey now should I rotate supers to work bee's up to less full supers?

Or should I add another super?

No hurry to extract.

[Finsky]

These two hives are well estblished and plenty of brood and food in deeps.

Instead of taking honey now should I rotate supers to work bee's up to less full supers?

Or should I add another super?

No hurry to extract.

Sounds good. If you extract, it is better that you have more than 2 supers extract in one time.

So you turn your deeps, it is good but in same time you should have new space where bees put honey which they move up from deeps. They take honey away and make brood in cells.  One full deep frame contains 5 lbs honey.

You have good hives and so you need altogether  3 deeps and 4 supers per hive. 3 deeps therefore that your tools are not all in work. You surely need margin to give foundations and lift old deep frames up. So you can easily renew combs.

Don't worry about money. This gives your invest back quicker than you can imagine.
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[Brian D. Bray]

If you are limited on the amount of supers, extracting and putting them back on the hive can be a good way to go.  Just remember a few things:
1. The bees will use any residual honey left in the comb to dress it up and start refilling it.
2. Frequent extraction will waste a lot of honey getting your equipment wet and then cleaning it up again.
3. It can be labor intensive.

[Finsky]

If you are limited on the amount of supers, .

Then it is better to get more. ... If every cards are in the play it is painfull to nurse bees.

2. Frequent extraction will waste a lot of honey getting your equipment wet and then cleaning it up again..

Huge amount will be needed to grease all honey handling surfaces: uncapping, extracting, sieving, moving .

It is better to have extra supers and keep honey in the warm of hive, but ofcourse allways free room for new nectar.

[towson joe]

thanks for all the good suggestions.
will keep all supers going and will add more if needed.