Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Bees will not cap honey  (Read 12595 times)

Offline Wits End

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 101
  • Gender: Male
Bees will not cap honey
« on: July 24, 2011, 05:53:18 pm »
My supers have been pretty full of honey for a while but bees will not cap it. I put empty supers below full supers but still only minimal capping. I found a few frames with some capped brood cells in one hive but I know they will hatch and I don't think queeny will cross empty super now. Any suggestions on speeding the process?
Jeff and Kellie Houston
Wits End Blueberry and Bee Farm
Greenwood Mississippi

Offline Algonam

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 195
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2011, 08:06:35 pm »
I can't help you because I am new to beekeeping but that brings up a question ......Is uncapped honey not consumable?
We extracted honey today from a frame that was mostly capped but we also took the uncapped honey.

Oh Canada!

Offline garys520

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 71
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2011, 08:52:42 pm »
Uncapped honey could be ready to harvest, but it's a gamble.  I mixed both capped and uncapped and ruined twenty pounds of honey.  I've since invested in a refractometer, which has saved me a couple of times.

Offline AllenF

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 8192
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2011, 10:23:03 pm »
Bees know when to cap or why not to cap.   To humid to cap?   Dearth?   Try the shake test.

Offline BrentX

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 156
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2011, 11:12:20 pm »
I was in the same position with about 1/3 capped, the rest nectar in open cells.  Two weeks later all was capped.  I believe they just needed a little time to finish the honey.  Wait a little and see if they increase the capped quantity.

Offline Finski

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 3928
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2011, 04:11:56 am »
.
With good flow, when you get one box of capped honey, bees  need 2 boxes more where to spread nectar and dry it up to honey.

Then bees need honey enough that cells re maximum full and they cap it.


If flow is heavy and moisture content high, they must store thick layers of nextar into cells and this takes several weeks time to dry it from 30% to 75%.

I have just now that kind of situation. Combs are full but they cap it slowly. That rises risk of swarming too.

When my balance hive's rise is 7 kg a day, it means perhaps that bees have transported daily 20 kg nectar to the hive.

Uncapped honey.... You just wait that they get more nectar and fill the combs.


.
Language barrier NOT included

Offline luvin honey

  • Super Bee
  • *****
  • Posts: 1540
  • Gender: Female
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2011, 10:04:13 pm »
I would assume they're still drying it down...

I have 2/3 capped honey on my bars, about 1/3 uncapped, but we harvested some for our own use anyway. Interestingly, my bees always, always have thin, runny honey (and I'm referring to the capped stuff). It stores great, tastes excellent but is more the texture of maple syrup than most honey--although not quite as thin as m.s. Any ideas on why?
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
---Emily Dickinson

Offline kedgel

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 192
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2011, 11:25:35 pm »
Trust the ladies to know their business.  High humidity slows the capping rate. Even capped honey will absorb moisture through the cappings. You can get by robbing frames with a few uncapped cells, but a half a frame or so can cause the other honey to ferment.  You can dry it some by leaving it a little longer to dry.  I always dry mine by putting a shop vac on the blower side and putting the floor attachment at the entrance.  I stack my supers on a bottom board and put a screened inner cover on top.  A little duct tape at the bottom seals around the vac hose and keeps the pests out.  The warm air blowing over the frames overnight works great for me here in the humidity capital of the U.S.  One note of caution:  if you're in an area with SHB, you may want to freeze the frames overnight before trying to dry it.  24 hours is about all it takes for the ever-present larvae to start burrowing through the combs and ruining the honey--I learned that the hard way.  I got busy and didn't get to extracting it as soon as I planned.  When I pulled it out it was crawling with tiny larvae!
Talent is a dull blade that cuts nothing unless wielded with great force--Pat Travers

Online Ben Framed

  • Global Moderator
  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 12404
  • Mississippi Zone 7
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #8 on: July 09, 2022, 08:10:05 pm »
A good old topic that was posted around this time of year several years ago that some might find helpful and interesting.

Phillip
2 Chronicles 7:14
14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Offline NigelP

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 268
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2022, 02:32:02 am »
Buy a cheap refractometer and check the moisture content. A lot of uncapped honey is fine to extract (but not all).

Offline BeeMaster2

  • Administrator
  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 13494
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #10 on: July 10, 2022, 07:47:55 am »
We just extracted honey from 5 hives. A lot of it wasn?t capped but the flow a couple of weeks before we removed it. Judy wanted me to put all of the uncapped honey back in the hives. I just pulled all of it that didn?t have brood in the box. We kept testing the honey as it came out of the extractor to make sure we didn?t put thin honey in the bottling tank. Every batch was low. Some at 16.5% the highest was 18%. It averaged out at 17.5. If I had pulled this honey during the flow, it would have lots of thin, high moisture honey in it and we would have had to dry it. Timing is important.
Jim Altmiller
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Offline paus

  • Field Bee
  • ***
  • Posts: 660
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #11 on: July 10, 2022, 11:20:14 am »
I have wondered if the bees leave honey uncapped in hot weather to get the last bit of evaporation, and therefore a little bit of cooling from honey, rather than cap it and stop the evaporation?????

Online Ben Framed

  • Global Moderator
  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 12404
  • Mississippi Zone 7
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #12 on: July 10, 2022, 11:37:22 am »
Quote
I have wondered if the bees leave honey uncapped in hot weather to get the last bit of evaporation, and therefore a little bit of cooling from honey, rather than cap it and stop the evaporation?????

It takes a certain amount of time to dry honey enough to be capped. Once the honey has been dried to the proper moisture content and level, yet 'seems' to be ignored (still waiting in limbo if you will). I theorize, (speaking for my area), it might be because when hot weather hits and the flow ends, this cuts off nectar/resources and will naturally make for slow capping. It takes resources to produce wax cappings, and since resources for producing wax capping becomes scarce in hot weather here in my area, then that pretty much points to the answer, in my opinion.....

Phillip


« Last Edit: July 10, 2022, 12:11:31 pm by Ben Framed »
2 Chronicles 7:14
14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Offline TheHoneyPump

  • Queen Bee
  • ****
  • Posts: 1389
  • Work Hard. Play Harder.
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #13 on: July 10, 2022, 10:18:21 pm »
There is also the flip side.  Honey left uncapped because it is too dry.  Only way to know and choose the harvest properly is to spend 35$ on amazon and get yourself a refractometer.  Take it with you to the beehive and scoop some out of the cells of frames you know have been idle uncapped.  Let the data drive your decisions.
When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

Offline Bob Wilson

  • Queen Bee
  • ****
  • Posts: 1100
  • Gender: Male
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #14 on: July 11, 2022, 11:39:18 pm »
Interesting. I thought it was just my horizontal, long langstroth hives not expelling humidity well enough. Last year I waited until August for whole frames to finish being capped. This year looks the same. But, apparently even stacked, regular langstroth hives can take a long time

Offline yes2matt

  • Field Bee
  • ***
  • Posts: 538
  • Gender: Male
  • Urban setting, no acaricides
    • Love Me Some Honey
Re: Bees will not cap honey
« Reply #15 on: July 19, 2022, 03:30:55 pm »
Buy a cheap refractometer and check the moisture content. A lot of uncapped honey is fine to extract (but not all).
Only make sure you calibrate that cheap refractometer, either with the olive oil method or the glycerin solution. Man I was freaking out for a while before someone asked if I had calibrated. Oh. My honey is fine, the instrument was off. ;)

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk