![]() But I would air on the side of caution and test the moisture level with a refractometer.Īnd when it comes to storing your capped honey until its ready to be extracted, I wrote an article all about how long you can keep capped honey before extraction that I would encourage you to read!Īre you looking to buy a honey extractor? Check out this beginners guide to tangential honey extractors that I wrote. If the honey on your frame has been mostly capped for several weeks and the bees are not capping the rest, then you’re probably ok. In some cases, bees won’t cap the rest of the honey on a frame even though its ready for harvesting. Bees will not start filling the super with honey until there main hive (bottom box) are filled with brood and stored honey.Īs the bees begin to fill up your supers, you just add more supers on the top to take full advantage of the nectar flow. If the honey leaks out, it isn’t cured and shouldn’t be extracted.īeekeepers will only harvest honey from the super (bee box) placed on top of the main hive with a queen excluder between the bottom and top box. You can also turn the frame with the cells facing down and give it a gentle shake. You can measure the moisture level using a refractometer. Attempting to harvest this will produce watery honey and is likely to spoil. Its not really honey at this point, just uncured nectar. Raw honey is the nectar placed in the comb that hasn’t been evaporated down to the final concentration. This allows the nectar to fully cure into honey and the capping process is the signal that it can be harvested. It is recommended to wait until your frame only contains capped honey otherwise you run the risk of your bees no longer producing for the season.īees will only cap their honey with fresh pale wax once they’ve fanned the nectar down to 18 percent moisture level. You need to be careful to not harvest before at least 80% of the frame contains capped honey. Generally, beekeepers harvest their honey at the conclusion of a substantial nectar flow and when the beehive is filled with cured and capped honey. ![]() It’s very helpful for planning when to add your honey supers during a strong honey flow. When a super is added on to the hive don’t forget to include a queen excluder, you don’t want the queen laying in the frames meant for honey.Ĭheck out this article I wrote all about how long it takes bees to fill a honey super. When the nectar flow is on beekeepers will add supers to the hives in rapid succession allowing the bees to store as much as the flow will allow. The label will also include when it was harvested and from what plant life or vegetation. A new honeybee colony needs a full season to build up a large enough population to gather surplus honey.īeekeepers who harvest honey 3 times a year will usually label it as varietal honey. If its your first year of beekeeping with a new colony you won’t likely be able to harvest much honey if any at all. In some rare cases, due to local climate, beekeepers can only harvest once per season usually late summer or early fall. Most beekeepers can harvest at least 2-3 times a season between the months of mid June and mid September. When you treat your bees cannot overlap during the honey flow. You also need to carefully time any chemical treatment you administer your bees for mites and such. But you don’t want to harvest to late because your risking running into cold weather and taking too much honey without leaving enough for the colony to survive the winter. ![]() You don’t want to harvest too early because you won’t capitalize on the full amount of honey available. Like anything in beekeeping, the number of times you can harvest honey in a year varies by your region and weather conditions. Knowing your best window of time for harvesting is very important and will mean the difference between gathering great tasting honey or honey that could spoil.
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