I know that this has been discussed before and there are many different opinions. But I am wondering....if you don't put a queen excluder on, what keeps the queen from going up in the honey super?
I have been monitoring my hive and it seems like the queen is laying on only about 4 frames, and she is building it upwards. The first inspection she was in the bottom brood super, then one week later she was in the top one. There are empty frames on either side of the frames that she layed in. So she is working in a column.
I have added a honey super in anticipation of the nectar flow. I don't want her to continue building straight up and not going sideways. But I don't know if I want to use an excluder.
What is everybody's thoughts?
For clarification, when you say empty, is that "drawn but empty" or is that undrawn foundation?
The first thing that you can do is to manipulate the frames. If not drawn out, for sure, but you can move the layed in frames to the outside and the empty ones to the middle. Provided that you are in a warm enough climate, although moving 2 empties to the middle won't hurt much.
The second thing, if your honey super is foundation, then no, don't use the excluder. The bees will resist drawing foundation with an excluder on. If it is all drawn comb, then it is probably a good idea, but check after a bit to see if they've been storing honey up above, if there is little activity up there, then take it off.
If worse comes to worst, she'll lay a few frames up in the super, and then as the honey flow progresses they will back fill them. Or you just won't extract those.
Once the honey supers are full, the queen is reluctant to cross over them to lay eggs and a queen excluder is moot, unless you have drone sized comb in your upper supers.
Rick
The empty frames...are drawn comb, but with no eggs or brood in them.
are the frames just outside the brood nest filled with honey or pollen? if they are, shove them over and put the empty frames on either side of the brood nest. if they are not, put some empty frames into the brood nest. move the capped brood to the outside of the brood and put the empty frames next to where she has been laying. next to the frames that have eggs and very young larva. if you spot her then put the drawn empty frame either side of the frame she is on.
as scadsobees said, don't use the excluder until the honey supers have drawn comb. if you do, they will pro ably swarm before going up there.
The bees have no intentions of building a scattered brood nest. It's too hard to manage and heat and cool. They will build it in one area, but they are often desperate for drone comb (as beekeepers tend to remove that) and the queen will go lay in the super because they can rework white wax into drones easily but not cocooned brood comb. But there is nothing to stop her. I would rather she didn't run out of room to lay and they didn't have to squeeze through the exluder every trip to the supers...
Why not put an upper entrance above the queen excluder to allow bees access to super without going through brood chamber? I don't understand why an excluder would inhibit building of comb if the deeps are all drawn out
I have found uses for the excluder, but to use it to keep the queen out of the honey supers is not one of them.
I never have quite understood why letting the queen lay where she wishes is an issue. I know people don't want brood in the honey supers but if you are respecting the bee and her agenda (to store up honey for the winter) then you probably will be leaving the super(s) just above the brood nest for the bees for the winter.
If harvest involves only taking boxes at least one above the brood nest and possibly two above, why would you care if the queen laid eggs in the box immediately above the brood nest? And like Michael says, she's not going to lay brood helter skelter - she is going to keep it mostly together.
Linda T in Atlanta
PS (Even though nobody has asked!) I use the queen excluder to drain cut comb honey, I plan to use it to trap the queen in the box above the rescued bee tree, and once I used it to separate two boxes to prove that the hive was a two story apartment with in fact two queens - one in each "apartment" (hive box). Otherwise it is in storage most of the time.
The queen will always lay just below the honey dome. The next box up should never be added until 80% of the lower boxes are filled. If there are only 4 frames filled in each of the 2 brood boxes, place all 8 in the bottom box, remove the honey super until the second brood box is 80+% filled. She will never lay 2 boxes below the bottom of the honey stores. Queen excluders are not needed when a hive is properly managed.
I had a queen that moved into a couple of shallow supers year before last. I never did get to extract that hive that year due to the brood on top. I could not get her to go down until winter.
She did not go down because there was insufficient honey coming in to fill the super and hive body. If there had been, she would have moved down. They will not store and cap honey below the brood nest.
I have alwasy kept an entrance in the top of the hive, but they have never used it other than just to hang outside of the hive a little bit.