Do I have to remove Queen Excluder in Austin TX?

[Aisha]

Hi all

I am having some time constraints and technical problems removing a queen excluder. I have 2 medium boxes for brood, the queen excluder, and then three supers of honey that I want to leave on the hive over winter because I don't have time to extract it this fall. This is an 8 frame hive full of bees.

In Austin the average low temperature in winter is in the 40s. We get 1 -3 hard freezes.

Can I leave the queen excluder on so the bees will stay in the brood boxes instead of moving up into the honey supers?

Thanks a million!

[wadehump]

I would better safe than sorry.

[beedeetee]

If the only place that they have food is in the honey supers the excluder won't stop them (except the queen) from moving up there. As long as there is food in the brood boxes, they probably won't move up.

[ralittlefield]

I do not know how your bees behave in the winter, but here in Maine I would be afraid that the winter cluster would move up to the food over the course of the winter leaving the queen behind to starve.

[psnolte]

Standard overwintering practice for Mediums that I've always heard of is leaving them 3 boxes. You've only got 2 below the queen excluder, and one of those is probably empty or full of pollen, so you're not giving the bees much to go on before they have to move up and leave the queen behind. I lived in Abilene TX for a few years and it got pretty chilly and dead looking for a lot of the winter. I wasn't keeping bees at the time, but I doubt there was a lot of forage available.