@Dawn_SD Hi! I have the flow hive and you have helped me a lot in the past. I have 2 deep brood boxes that are full and look really good. I tested for mites this morning using the alcohol test and didn’t find any. I put a flow super on July 1. I haven’t been able to check it until this morning. 4 frames have about 20% capped honey on both sides and the other frames have no honey.
Should I remove the super? If so, can I harvest the little bit of honey that is there?
Hi Ryan,
Yes I would remove the super. I recently posted my reasoning on this thread:
You can, but if it is uncapped, I would harvest it off the hive. This is controversial advice (Flow disagrees with me), but in my experience, mostly uncapped Flow frames create more of a leak back into the hive at a time of year when the colony can’t afford to lose honey. I use an inner cover with a bee escape to clear the Flow super. Mann Lake and other bee suppliers have these. I leave it in place for 48 hours, then remove the super. Usually there are very few bees in the super at this point and I harvest in my kitchen, with the super on a tilt over a large sheet pan to catch the drips. If the honey is so uncapped, I would either do a honey refractometer test, or just freeze it until needed and eat (or give it back to the bees) within a week or two.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your help!