While checking the hives last week I noticed lots of frames that were partially capped. I was hoping this week they would be ready to pull. The problem is uncapped honey, if the moisture content is too high, will ferment and will not keep. The bees will cap their honey with the moisture content is down around 17%, clever little girls aren't they!
So I started reading up on refractometers. These tools read the moisture content honey, along with things.
The neat thing about a refractometer is if you check the uncapped honey in your hives and it is around 17% you can pull it and extract it. Not only does it work out good for you and saves you time, it saves time and energy for the bees. They don't have to go to all the work of making wax and capping it. They can go back to collecting nectar or whatever their job happens to be.
Its a win win situation.
So once the decision was made to purchase one I started to research it. They ranged from a few bucks up to 100's of dollars. It didn't make sense to me to spends tons being a non commercial beekeeper but on the other hand I didn't want to buy something that was too cheap. I settled on one that was highly recommended and was very affordable.
I tried it out tonight and it proved to be very simple to use. Tomorrow we are going out to the hives and check the uncapped frames and hopefully we can pull them and get them extracted.
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