When is the Flow Over

[hazmatinferno]

Second year beekeeper here and wanting to learn what everyone looks for to determine that the flow is over.
It seems that most talk about pulling supers off and extracting at the end of June and/or first week of July. I am assuming (like everything else in beekeeping) that this is dictated by the weather and what the plants are doing. So, what clues do you use to know when to pull the supers?

[reedyfork]

In most previous years, I have targeted the July 4 holiday as my time to pull supers. The idea being to wait as long as possible, but to get them off before a real dearth and the bees start consuming the honey they've stored. This was also done when I had fewer colonies and rented an extractor for one big extraction event...

However, I have since purchased my own extractor and have started under-supering. So I am no longer waiting until July 4, but pulling off supers as they fill up and get capped, and extracting periodically in smaller batches. I just completed my second round this weekend. I have a feeling my final pull will be earlier this year though - maybe mid-June.

[hazmatinferno]

Thanks for the reply reedyfork!

[Jacobs]

I harvested at Brown Summit yesterday. The bees were very interested in any honey that dripped from damaged cells. Having hives open to take honey did not trigger probing or robbing. To me, that triggers the transition from flow to dearth.