So after extraction, the cleaned ends are refitted and any that were on narrow and drawn out combs are refitted with wide. As you say Andrew, they are all back in boxes and briefly checked by eye that no high areas correspond with its neighbour. Simples. I know some folk are very good and ensure the same supers go back on the same hives for bio security but never quite got round to it.
Jazz - I am nearly always up against it time wise doing inspections, progress with filling supers is simply judged by their weight whilst being removed, checking the brood chamber is my main purpose. Not saying checking progress in supers wouldn’t be quite fun. If all the boxes are heavy and the flow is going well I add new supers directly above the QX whilst reassembling ( I hear the sound of someone whistling doubtfully surely
![😉](//cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/3.1/png/64/1f609.png)
? ) and so first end May extraction just take the top ones and leave the last one with whatever is on it to tide the bees over June- I don’t get much OSR round here usually. The June Gap is often a problem created by beekeepers taking away all the stores whilst the brood chamber is full of just brood and scant honey - it’s why the bigger ones often crash quickest.
The already filled top boxes will all be capped or at least ripened by then. You can see the cappings easily enough from between the seams anyway and if it is groaningly heavy, it’s fine.
Second end of season extraction they all come off. It is quite normal to have some filled but not capped but the old shake test quickly reassures it’s ripened okay and when amalgamated with so much already capped the combined moisture content is never appreciably raised anywhere near 20%. You can to an extent ensure capped combs by providing more supers at the beginning of the summer and less at the end. I am happy for them to store surplus in the brood chamber in July if it means I can extract fewer but full and capped supers. What I certainly don’t want is dozens of half filled combs to have to deal with.
If it doesn’t warm up soon it will be an academic problem however..