honey collection

[p51d]

I am on a roll for my questions for the year to become better at this hobby.

Many thanks for opinions from my fellow beekeepers.

My question is I wait and extract once a year with my hives. Generally in late June-early July, so a hive might have one honey super, or two supers depending on the strength of the hive.

I saw comments earlier if a super is full, pull and extract it. This could be a new direction, do most of the bee keeps wait for extracting once or twice a year? Or once a super is full?

Comments are appreciated.

[Jacobs]

I have freezer space for frames, so I approach it on a frame by frame basis. I will pull a capped frame as I find it and replace it with a drawn, open frame. I can freeze frames and wait until I have enough to extract. This gives the bees additional space and saves the disappointment of seeing several capped frames on one inspection and finding that the bees have used or moved the honey on a later inspection. I do not remove honey that is in the lower supers along side the main brood areas.

This past season, I extracted what I wanted and still have frozen frames to feed back to the bees if they need it during this period of brood build up and nectar dearth.

[Wally]

I harvest when I find a full super.

[p51d]

o.k. I will harvest when a super is full versus waiting. I figure I only need to make a mess once with several supers versus making a mess with one. This advise will not make the wife happy. LOL