I am experimenting with queen excluders (with top entrances) on some hives. In your experience will they draw comb above the excluder or must I get it drawn before putting it above excluder? Am short on drawn comb yet frustrated by my queens laying all over even where there's room below...
I know a lot of folks hate QE's...would love to hear from folks who use them below honey supers in their current yards.
Thanks in advance!
Exactly, which means if theyre working above an excluder your brood nest is probably backfilled. Not a good thing for early spring. Something else you could try after swarming season is over move the queen down a couple months before extraction and add excluderIt seems most of the problems with excluders come from hives that have too much room for the bees below the excluder.
Crazy Roland
:thumbsup: That's it. The speed the queen is laying eggs is more or less fixed. If you provide too many brood combs the queen needs longer to move on her "laying path" from one end to the other. Longer distance, same laying speed. This results in free cells by emerging brood that do not immediately receives eggs after they are freed. Free cells = bees putting pollen and nectar into it. When the queen comes back to that cells from her journey through the hive, she founds no or little free cells to lay eggs into. You end up with pollen and nectar and brood clogged combs.dFortune, guess again. No backfilling here. The queen always has empty frames in front of her.