Queen Excluder or not

[MattDavey]

When I use front facing top entrances above the excluder I get mated virgins moving in the honey supers. How do you stop that?

Odfrank, have you been putting brood frames above the excluder with eggs or young larvae?

I have seen queen cells started, but usually when there is at least a super in-between or they are not used to an excluder. The sudden drop in queen pheromone to the isolated nurse bees, even just for a few hours, can be enough for emergency queen cells to be started. Once queen cells are started they are often finished.

Otherwise, as Roland said, it sounds like they have swarmed.

Matthew Davey

[johng]

I have tried it both ways for the past couple years and I really can't see much difference in honey production. But, it is a lot easier to pull honey with excluders you can keep taking off boxes until you get down to the excluder. When I don't use excluders I sometimes have to leave the last super on to let the brood hatch out before I pull it off. This causes extra work. Now that I have started to move my hives a little more I'm going to use them on all of my hives so the hives will be the same size when I get ready to load them up.

[Michael Bush]

Isaac Hopkins was a commercial beekeeper who later became the State Apiarist of New Zealand and he was quite eloquent on the matter. Here's what he had to say in The Australasian Bee Manual:

“Queen Excluders... are very useful in queen rearing, and in uniting colonies; but for the purpose they are generally used, viz., for confining the queen to the lower hive through the honey season, I have no hesitation in condemning them. As I have gone into this question fully on a previous occasion, I will quote my remarks:—

“The most important point to observe during the honey season in working to secure a maximum crop of honey is to keep down swarming, and the main factors to this end, as I have previously stated, are ample ventilation of the hives, and adequate working-room for the bees. When either or both these conditions are absent, swarming is bound to take place. The free ventilation of a hive containing a strong colony is not so easily secured in the height of the honey season, even under the best conditions, that we can afford to take liberties with it; and when the ventilating—space between the lower and upper boxes is more than half cut off by a queen-excluder, the interior becomes almost unbearable on hot days. The results under such circumstances are that a very large force of bees that should be out working are employed fanning-, both inside and out, and often a considerable part of the colony will be hanging outside the hive in enforced idleness until it is ready to swarm.

"Another evil caused by queen-excluders, and tending to the same end—swarming—is that during a brisk honey-flow the bees will not readily travel through them to deposit their loads of surplus honey in the supers, but do store large quantities in the breeding-combs, and thus block the breeding-space. This is bad enough at any time, but the evil is accentuated when it occurs in the latter part of the season. A good queen gets the credit of laying from two to three thousand eggs per day: supposing she is blocked for a few days, and loses the opportunity of laying, say, from fifteen hundred to two thousand eggs each day, the colony would quickly dwindle down, especially as the average life of the bee in the honey season is only about six weeks.

"For my part I care not where the queen lays—the more bees the more honey. If she lays in some of the super combs it can be readily rectified now and again by putting the brood below, and side combs of honey from the lower box above; some of the emerging brood also may be placed at the side of the upper box to give plenty of room below. I have seen excluders on in the latter part of the season, the queens idle for want of room, and very little brood in the hives, just at a time when it is of very great importance that there should be plenty of young bees emerging.”

[jim lyon]

Keeping queens confined to the brood nest with an excluder is invaluable in controlling shb in your extracting facility. I also think (but dont have actual proof of this) that it keeps any issues with chemical residues in older brood combs from tainting any of your honey supers. A top entrance of some sort is probably a good idea if for no other reason than ventilation.

[AstroBee]

"Another evil caused by queen-excluders, and tending to the same end—swarming—is that during a brisk honey-flow the bees will not readily travel through them to deposit their loads of surplus honey in the supers, but do store large quantities in the breeding-combs, and thus block the breeding-space. This is bad enough at any time, but the evil is accentuated when it occurs in the latter part of the season. A good queen gets the credit of laying from two to three thousand eggs per day: supposing she is blocked for a few days, and loses the opportunity of laying, say, from fifteen hundred to two thousand eggs each day, the colony would quickly dwindle down, especially as the average life of the bee in the honey season is only about six weeks.

Just when I thought beesource was evolving on the whole excluder debate we're swept back into the primordial goo.... "Another evil..." that's a little dramatic. I guess if you call using a tool the wrong way "evil" then I'm good with the drama.

Not sure how you where running your hives with excluders, but I have never seen problems with swarming. The key, as mentioned repeatedly in this thread, is the use of an upper entrance.

Sure, if you put an excluder under bare foundation and no upper entrance swarming will certainly occur. There have been countless stories here about this usage, I feel, leading to the overwhelming confusion. But if I drive a nail with a screwdriver I'll likely gouge the wood - is that the screwdrivers fault? The QE is a tool, and like any tool there are right and wrong ways to use it. I use them on every production colony. My yields exceed the state average by a factor of 3 (conservatively) and beyond other local bee keepers in my area. I mark all production queens and keep good records so a swarming event will be discovered.

[Roland]

Astrobee - could it be that those that condemn excluders are not as adept at managing a hive(swarm, population), as those that see them as a tool? This seems to be a recurrent pattern, those that claim to have more productive , populace hives, seem to have fewer issues with excluders, whereas those that have problems with hive management, swarming, and building populations, seem to blame excluders..... Or I just might be crazy.

Crazy Roland

[AstroBee]

Roland,

Glad you mentioned that, because I was thinking exactly the same thing. I've been struggling with what is at the root of this huge debate, and you've probably identified a big component. Its that, or simply beekeepers just like to argue...maybe we should start a new thread....

[Michael Bush]

>"Another evil..." that's a little dramatic

It's just the writing style of the 19th Century which is when Isaac Hopkins first wrote that.

[Roland]

Another component is the structure of the hive. We run a single deep brood chamber. If they are given more room than that, they have less reason to expand across an excluder. With a double deep brood chamber, there is alot of room in the corners to hide honey and not cross an excluder, especially if not heavily populated.

Crazy Roland

[AstroBee]

We run a single deep brood chamber.

Hmmm, so do I.

I must be crazy too.

[westernbeekeeper]

We run a single deep brood chamber.

We also run single deeps in the business operation.

[Beetastic]

I was thinking about running a few of my hives with QE's this year. Gleaned some great info from the discourse. Will give it a go on a few and see what happens. Haven't had too many problems with brood in my honey frames, but it will be interesting to see how things progress vs hives in the same yard sans QE. I run all mediums and foundationless.

[MDS]

I use an excluder until the first super has capped honey then remove it for the remaining supers above. If my first (lower super) is undrawn foundation I leave the excluder off until they start drawing the foundation out which starts with a heavy nector flow.