Harvesting soybeans later than intended can present many challenges for minimizing harvest losses. Those challenges are amplified when snow is on the ground and impacting harvest. Minimization of losses starts at the header. Checking that the sickle-bar knives are sharp and the guards are adjusted properly will ensure stems are being cut rather than broken or leaned over by the header. Generally reel speed should be slightly faster than grounds speed to be certain plants are being collected by the header. Another good practice for harvesting soybeans in wet and snow-covered conditions is to reduce combine ground speed while harvesting. That will give the machine extra time to cut the plants. It will ensure they are transported to the throat of the machine with minimal damage or losses. Concave clearances, rotor speeds, fan speeds and sieve settings all depend on crop condition at harvest. If beans are generally dry but stems, pods and remaining leaves have increased moisture content, more-aggressive threshing may be required to clean plant material from the crop. More-aggressive threshing can also lead to damage and reduced crop quality. Incremental adjustments of concave clearances – increase for wet conditions – then threshing rotor speed – increase for wet conditions – will help find the optimal settings. Also ensure there is a uniform feed rate into the machine, maintaining a consistent load on the threshing rotor to ensure optimal performance. Increased fan speed can help pneumatically separate soybeans from plant material; however that can also lead to greater losses through the sieves if set too high. Small adjustments to combine settings can have a big impact on machine performance. Check often for losses behind the combine to ensure your harvest is as efficient as it can be in adverse conditions. Try to identify where losses are happening when operating the machine. If beans can be seen leaving the header, focus on minimizing that loss before making any other adjustments. Incorrect settings at multiple stages in the combine can significantly increase losses and will be difficult to identify. Source - http://www.kmaland.com