Autumn collection of honey

[steve_e]

Last year, at varroa treatment time in the autumn, I collected my supers of honey and found that there were a few frames which had plenty of honey but weren't capped.

From what I've read it's not a good idea to harvest these as they quite possibly have a higher water content and will cause the rest of the honey to not achieve below 17% of water content (is it 17%? can't remember now), which then causes a risk of fermentation etc when bottled.

So I wasn't sure what to do about this, and decided in the end to leave these frames on two of the hives which looked as though they didn't have as much in the way of BB stores as they should have.

When I'd finished the varroa treatment four weeks later, the BB's were lovely and full of stores, and the frames I'd left in were capped and pristine. Of course, they were also now tainted with apil-life treatment so were unuseable.

So my dilemma is what to do about this uncapped honey if I find a substantial amount at the end of this season. Is this a common thing or is it something I'm doing wrong in my beekeeping. Did I put a new super on too early so that they kept filling up this area when they could have been filling up the BB?

What do you do with uncapped frames of super honey when it's time to do your varroa treatment?

 

[RoseCottage]

Gently shake them and see whether anything drips. If frames are just waiting for capping then so long as nothing drips on shaking I spin it out and have had no problems yet.
We do the same with OSR as waiting cause issues at extraction time,
All the best,
Sam

 

[Rosti]

Steve it is possible to harvest when there is a low proportion of uncapped, but always best to do so with the help of a refractometer confirmation that it is close to a 20% water figure on the uncapped and the rest is comfortably below, refracs now cheaply bought for a £10 or so from a number of sources. This probably only applies to frames where the majority is capped and a sub 15% minority is not.

If you find you can't harvest your uncapped then I think your options to utlise are:

1. immediately move above the crown board (if you aren't feeding for autumn yet) with bruised capping and let them clean your frames out (as they would on the ones you put for cleaning after spinning)
2. Put those suspect frames aside and when you have finished harvesting honey spin them out, segregate and feed back as part of your autumn syrup (no point storing for later feed back if the honey is not yet at a stable aw level).

 

[Chris B]

I would hazard a guess that in the time between end of summer flow (mid July here) and the ivy coming in, all honey is ripe whether capped or not. A good frame shake would confirm as mentioned already.
17% moisure is ideal but the safe limit is a few points higher. I wouldn't be concerned with 19%. I think the legal limit is a little higher still. A refractometer is definitely a good investment.

 

[steve_e]

Thanks for those replies, that's very useful.

Rosti, if you give the honey back as part of the autumn feed, do you mix it with the 2:1 sugar syrup mix?

 

[oliver90owner]

There are so many alternatives, even in addition to those above. I just do whatever is necessary at the time.

Swapping frames to adjacent hives, feeding the frames of unripe to those colonies so they move it and cap off their remaining honey stores so it mght be available for harvest just a week or so later.

I have never yet spun out any high moisture unripe honey on purpose for feeding back. I did once feed back because I got it wrong. A quick recycing job for the bees and twice the extraction work for me. You learn, not to do that, fairly quickly!

Storing and feeding back later, or simply replacing, after the varroah treatment, are options.

After all, one should aim for only part of one super to be uncapped at most (at least in each apiary, provided the health of each colony in that apiary is on par). Depends, of course what the dilution might be within your harvest and that needs to be taken into account. The odd frame of part-capped will not make a lot of difference when blended with another 100kgs.

I daresay the commercial boys are not selling low water content honey, if they can help it;the closer to the safe limit, the better for them. In their case water is money!

The analogy is the farmer drying his grain crop to far below the required maximum. Extra fuel costs to dry off the moisture (no extra remuneration for low moisture grain), and a loss in weight sold.

Other things that might affect your chosen 'route' is whether you feed sugar to replace every skerret of honey you can squeeze from the hives. I have a fairly laid-back approach to that, and mostly allow them to over-winter on their own collected honey

Regards, RAB

 

[Rosti]

Yes, just throw it in instead of the sugar at a ratio of Honey to Sugar x 1.25 and leave the water as is, still close enough to a 2:1 syrup as makes no odds. R

 

[Rosti]

RAB, with regard spinning out, surely if you've done your harvest and segregated suspect frames as you load the spinner then it's sat in front of you then the extra work is minimal. I'd rather do that than try and sort through in the apiary with hacked of bees having a pop at the bloke who's just nicked their winter stores! Certainly I would rather know that my frames were clear of low grade honey and available for a clean-up by the bees, and safe winter storage. job done.

 

[oliver90owner]

the extra work is minimal.

But it is still done twice!

As I said, just one of the options, but that one is one I try to avoid.

RAB

 

[steve_e]

Other things that might affect your chosen 'route' is whether you feed sugar to replace every skerret of honey you can squeeze from the hives. I have a fairly laid-back approach to that, and mostly allow them to over-winter on their own collected honey
Regards, RAB

That's the way I felt about it last autumn - I was quite happy to leave a super on with these frames in - I guess that's what you mean?

But then it was suggested that leaving this extra space also left extra room to heat up - plus it's not good to leave a QE between the BB & Super over winter and I didn't particularly want to move to a super and a half.

So I'm still a bit unclear on how you leave enough overwintering stores without falling foul of the two issues above.

 

[Queens59]

Steve_e As a very nervous newbee, with only one colony I didn't want to lose - I overwintered on BB and super, with no QE. When I opened up ad had a look, they had overwintered very well, started laying quite early and foraging quickly. Of all the stores they appeared to have only eaten 2 1/2 frames!! The BB still had 4 frames totally stuffed with stores, and a super above untouched. I had worried that HM would lay in the super but she stayed in the BB. ...I have taken off the super for a spring varroa treatment (as I didn't use OA) and have spun out 3 of the frames (YES, I christened my extractor) and still left them plenty of stores...happy bees and happy me...

 

[steve_e]

That's good to know Queens59. Certainly one of the things I'll do next year is take off the uncapped super frames while varroa treating, so if they end up filling and capping them after treatment I can still extract them.

 

[freethorpe bees]

I have got a partially capped/uncapped brood frame (honey obviously!) which I had to remove a couple of days ago and replaced with foundation. I would like to feed this back to them in the autumn. Is the freezer the best place to store it?
FB