> What happens is they fill 2-3 suppers but will not finish
> capping the bottom 1/3 if the combs in each super.

Well, what moisture do samples of honey from the capped areas
versus the uncapped area measure on a refractometer?

If the honey is within spec, waiting for capping
would simply delay your harvest.  If the honey in the
uncapped area is NOT within spec, then one must wait.

I never pull supers that contain even a minority of uncapped
honey without doing some spot checking with a refractometer
on the uncapped frames.  My personal experience has been that
once the bees start capping a frame, the whole frame will be
"within spec", but making any general statement about the
actions of bees is a dangerous practice of pure speculation.

One possible scenario is that you have had a break in the brood
cycle, and the colony lacks sufficient bees of wax scale producing
age to cap over the entire set of frames, but has sufficient bees
of that age to partly cap over each frame.  I don't know that all
lines of bees start at the top of a frame when capping and work
down, but my bees (NWCs) certainly do.

        jim (If the bands "Phish" and "Styx" merged,
             would they call themselves "Phish Styx"?
                 What about "The Police" and "The Cars"?)

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