That’s what I do. Inspect on Saturday and extract on Sunday. The only way to tell is to inspect first, then return when the bees have settled for extraction.
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Hi Adam, lifting frames up & simply putting them back down again is probably more disruptive to the bees than one would imagine. When you lift a frame up to put it back down, bees will quickly start to eat the honey that was disturbed by lifting the frame up or even just walk over it. When you put the frame back down, it will resume it’s original position, thus trapping bees between the comb & QX. This is a real problem in SHB areas because SHB will lay eggs in the trapped bees.
With a little bit of smoke, I find removing & replacing frames of honey to be not very disruptive at all. By scraping the wax from the bottom bars before replacing the sticky frames & the bees having cleaned up the loose honey above the QX, there are virtually no bees trapped under the bottom bars.
If there is a bit of burr comb above the QX, after a bit of smoke, I find my Perfect Pocket Hive Tool ideal for scraping that down.
Well not my idea. A chap called Robin Dartington used them on his long hive. I think originally he had a hive on a church roof and the spiral steps wouldn’t allow enough space to carry a full size spear…or something like that.
Making them for your hives will help. I saw your comment about brace comb on the bottom of the frames and them sticking to the queen excluder. Is this a particular problem then? I’ve not really met with that much here. I have top bee space in my hives.
Hi Dawn, I grabbed one of those half depth frames & the actual comb is way under half that of a full depth frame. I don’t know how to work out a %. The comb of the full depth measures 208mm & the comb of the 1/2 depth only measures 88mm. It’s easy to see how the bees could quickly fill & cap those frames. My son-in-law is a mathematician, he’d be able to work it out.
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Hi HHH, comb above the QX isn’t really a problem, it’s just that sometimes I take a few days to return the sticky frames which leaves part or sometimes all of the QX exposed for the bees to build onto. I remove most of that before returning the frames. I’m always careful not to wedge any bees between the bottom bar & QX or even between frames. Also between frames & the side of the box. I’m constantly scraping excess wax off frames to avoid wedging bees anywhere because of SHB.
I was thinking further about the 3x3 frame segments on the 10 frame super. You could still have normal thickness wood on the outsides & have them hang over slightly so you get a loose fit for all the frames. The other thing I was thinking is you could have round holes that line up with each other regardless of which way you positioned the boxes.
Dawn, I got the answer, 42.3%
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I find very few bees on capped honey; there’s no more work to do on that frame. If there is an unripe section, that’s where you’ll find the bees.
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SHB sounds a nightmare…you clearly have to be careful of leaving dead bees, comb etc for them to lay their eggs in.
You could just use a thick piece of Perspex on the side of those 3 frame supers…the outside ones could have wood but all the inner sides would be Perspex. The ends would all be wooden. If you added a piece of wood at each end…they would have a handle to pick them up with. Take photos of your prototype!
What is QX? We newbees dont know some of the lingo! Thanks
What about simply heating the honey to lower the water content?
Queen excluder …
Commercial honey producers have been known to do this, but I value the nutritional content of raw (unheated) honey. Heating it will destroy some of those components, and you can no longer call it raw.
Commercial wet honey is dealt with by blowing warm dry air over it. The honey is not actually heated.
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True, they heat it to pasteurize or ultrafilter it. But heating honey (even gently and carefully) does damage the quality to my palate - it turns darker and loses a lot of the floral aroma. Tastes more like caramel syrup to me rather than good honey.
If you have uncapped honey in frames that you really want to extract for some reason, you could put the super (without bees!) in a room with a fan and a dehumidifier. I have heard people say that you can get the water content down by about 0.5% per day using this method. Of course, you still need a refractometer to check when you have got the water content low enough. 
Hi HHH, I wanted to show Wilma the idea, my 3 frame observation hive (without bees) just happened to be sitting on top of another empty super. It was ideal to use as an illustration. The ply side was off one side leaving the perspex. I was thinking the same thing myself about perspex. I would have 2 rows of 4 holes that all line up.
I’ll do better than photos, I’ll make a video:)
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Woohoo! I can’t wait. I am feeling withdrawal from Jeff videos!
Hi Dale, just a tip, I did a quick google search of “QX in beekeeping”. The answer was there straight away. Any term you don’t understand, just add “in beekeeping” to it & as it turned out the answer popped up.
PS, my apologies, it takes you to another forum, however when you read the context where QX is used, you quickly reach the conclusion of what they’re talking about.
Hi Dawn, thank you:) I’ve got a video to make on Queensland Arrowroot in the coming weeks. I have it growing in a corner of my vege garden in the sun. The amount of food that will come out of that one plant since last Sept. is staggering. We often hear the term “food security”. Qld. Arrowroot is one crop that could alleviate those concerns.
Jeff…the inventor! Yay…you can call it the Triple Decker Super…can’t wait to see the real thing…and to see it in action.
Thank you HHH, do you know what, somehow I seen to prefer the half depth supers. For two reasons: #1 The super is more stable when you put it down somewhere, especially if it’s sitting on the tray of a truck in transit. #2 If you have 2 or 3 half depth supers, the bees will fill & cap the top frames ready to harvest while working on the lower frames whereas with full depth supers like I’ve been talking about, you have to wait for the bees to fill & cap the whole frame.
Then you also have the big advantage of being able to use starter strips in the half depth frames & get less cross combing. Also they are great little frames to cut comb out of. Plus they are a cinch to shake bees off.
I like your idea of the shallow supers with 5 frames like you suggested.