what would you do with the honey?

[jsmob]

I have a hive that has 3 deeps on it, bottom is brood, top two are honey. Last week, 10 days ago, the top super, and middle super all frames where 3/4 capped. So I opened it up yesterday to take the honey off and found that the bees had uncapped the honey to about 3/4 of the top frames and most all frames in middle super are totally uncapped.
I don't know what I am looking at. Are they eating their stores? I want to reduce the hive to 2 deeps (get them ready for winter.) Here in CA I don't have a problem with humidity. So would you take the honey? ( Even though it is uncapped.) So I can get the the hive to 2 supers. Or would you leave it for a few more weeks to see if they cap it off.
Here our flow is over. While in the rural areas it is bone dry and the plants are brown, in town there are things still blooming. Like crape myrtle and such.

If you saw this, how would you handle getting the hive down to 2 supers? What would you do with the uncapped honey?

Thanks

[VolunteerK9]

Sounds to me like that you are well into your dearth and that they are using their stores. If it were me I would let em. It's theirs to use anyways  :-D

[AllenF]

If you do take the honey, you will need to feed them.

[RayMarler]

There is no way you need two boxes of honey on the hive for winter in Sacramento.  Now is dearth, and depending on your exact area in Sac, you may not get much of a fall flow in October either, sometimes we do though, so now is not good time to have expanding brood.  Now is time for consolidation of stores around brood for winter.

I would put on excluder, keeping the brood in the bottom box.
In the first half of September, I'd take the top box of honey and move it to the bottom of the stack, leaving the one box on top over the excluder.  The girls will start moving that honey out of the bottom box to the top box over the brood and over the excluder.  As the brood emerges, they'll be putting honey there too, moving the brood down into the bottom box.  By the first to the middle of October, I should end up with the top box capped honey and with the brood in the center of the two bottom boxes.  Then I'd pull off the top box for me and let them over winter in the two boxes remaining, which should be well rounded with stores around the brood by then.

[jsmob]

Thanks Ray and all. This sounds like a plane.

[slacker361]

no no a plane goes vrooooooooooommmmmmmmm


sorry I just had to

[VolunteerK9]

no no a plane goes vrooooooooooommmmmmmmm


sorry I just had to

Yup, with beer totin flight attendants jumping down the slide

[jsmob]

Spell check missed another one. Sorry! English was my foreign language in school.