I've recently discovered this source:
http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/queen-excluder-or-honey-excluder/
And it's led me to wonder whether I should even use excluders. I have an apiary site, in scrub land Australia, with 6 well established, mostly strong hives. These hives have been neglected, and the comb inside is dark and foul. I don't wish the bees to lay brood in the comb I wish to use to extract honey, but I also don't want to reduce the efficiency of my hives.
Under these conditions, should I make the effort in installing queen excluders? If I wish to use queen excluders in the future, should I use hives that have upper entrances instead of lower?
When i started keeping bees, in the early 70's, Queen excluders were considered a normal and almost mandatory part of ones management. Its been at least two decades since i quit using them. Though it has happened, brood in my extracting supers is virtually a non issue. I reverse my brood supers in the spring when the dandelions come on and put my first shallow on then. In theory i have just put the queen in the bottom and the top brood chamber has plenty of room. By the time she works her way through the upper brood chamber the shallow is on its way to being full, if not full. The old timers always said that a queen wont cross a full supper. It works for me.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm#excluders
From 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."--Isaac Hopkins, The Australasian Bee Manual
Quote from: omnimirage on January 27, 2016, 04:21:44 AM
I've recently discovered this source:
http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/queen-excluder-or-honey-excluder/
This is a failed experiment because of the skunk predation but I do believe in not using the QE for honey production because it saves a lot of work.
When a colony comes out of winter the brood nest expands considerably to get population up for the spring flow. How can one size fit all? So if a beekeeper decides to use a QE he either has to pick a size that is too small or too large or work the hive back and forth to make it just right. If the QE isn't in the way the bees will adjust the hive to what they need if all you do is give them empty space. There is logic to the efficiency of upper entrances when speaking of honey/nectar transfer but there is an inefficiency for ventilation. One would have to conduct an experiment on what the net work load is for a hive with upper entrances as to whether this takes a tool on a bees life or honey production. The preferred lower entrance has remained so for a long time. I don't know if that is because it is less work for the bees or less work for the beekeeper.
I have had luck in using them with a bottom and top entrance. The supers I put on the hive are 10 frame boxes with 8 drawn frames. Out of the limited hives I did this to for the last few years it was effective enough that I'm going to be moving all of my hives to this set up this year. I was doing it mostly for comb honey production but started dabbling with regular honey production.
I noticed no decrease in honey production from hives with or without queen excluders. What I did noticed was a faster pulling of the supers. I didn't have any frames from those supers that I had to set aside during harvest. The supers were easier to empty the bees out of (no larva). I had fewer bees hiding on the frames during harvest. Pulling supers only to find there's larva in there is a substantial waste of time on multiple fronts.
It is certainly possible to run productive hives with queen excluders IF you have drawn comb and you know how to use them. But why do they always recommend them for beginners? Of course the beginners, not only don't know how to manage the bees with them, they don't have drawn comb, so they put an excluder on and a box full of foundation and the bees never move up and they eventually swarm...
I heard Llloyd Spears say he wasn't a good enough beekeeper to use an excluder. If any of you know Lloyd you realize he is an awesome beekeeper...
Excellent question, but I've got no answer short of the suppliers have learned customers think they need them and will pay for them. I had a new local beekeeper who calls me for advice tell me his hive that was a package mere months prior swarmed. He gave me all the info (double deeps, with a super on top) and asked that I come out to review. He forgot to mention he had a queen excluder on there and I forgot to ask. Sure enough, there's an excluder on there with a completely untouched, undrawn super above it. He took it off and the hive was able to effectively requeen itself and get on stable footing by winter. He however lost the honey and drawn frames the hive would have produced without the excluder on there.
If I wasn't running dual entrances I'd be MUCH more resistant to going to excluders.
I'm still in need of convincing - I run an excluder in my hives and take honey off every 2-3 weeks. I helped a newbie recently who had bought two hives off an old beek who was retiring and he didn't use QE. 3 supers high, 10 full deeps per super. The hives were virtually full and out of the two hives we only got 3 full and capped frames without brood all the other frames had some patches of brood. Maybe it was aging queens as they were quite scattered but when I can pull 9-12 fully capped frames every 2-3 weeks with an excluder I am reluctant to change in light of my experience.(OK only one example but rather dramatic)
Wambat,
If it works for you don't change. I don't use QE but sometimes when my bees do what your friends did, I wish I had.
Jim
As a beginner I can answer why lots seem to use QEs - I did a lot of reading about beekeeping a few years ago, never ended up getting any hives, and did a lot of reading mid last year before getting two hives. Every single resource I read (apart from forums) said a QE goes between the brood box and super. New beekeepers might read a lot, or a little, but chances are what they are reading is telling them they need to use a QE.
Both of my hives have a QE on it, and they had 10 deep frames with foundation in the supers - both hives had no problem drawing and filing them with honey within about 4 weeks, and are almost ready for their second exraction.. seems to work OK for me, but I wouldn't mind trying a hive without a QE to compare.
As an aside - how do you get 'drawn comb'? After extraction honey I have drawn comb but it's pretty battered and covered in honey - the bees seem to like them a lot, but is there a way to have 'drawn comb' that isn't a 'sticky'?
Quote from: PhilK on February 01, 2016, 12:33:51 AM
I wouldn't mind trying a hive without a QE to compare.
When the words "Queen Excluder" are mentioned - what comes to mind ? I'd stake my pension that an image comes to mind of some kind of flat plate-like structure having narrow slots, the purpose of which is to prevent the queen from passing across that barrier, yet allow the workforce of worker bees to squeeze through.
One of my recurring themes on beekeeping forums is that life is NOT always one of 'black and white' - in the mould that Aristotle has bequeathed to us - but that alternatives often exist, or can be found.
So - in the case of queen exclusion, it need not be a case of EITHER physically denying the queen access to the supers, OR allowing her free reign - but that it is also possible to dissuade her from entering the supers by taking advantage of her reluctance to cross several inches of bare woodwork in the search for somewhere to lay her eggs.
If you consult the following webpage: http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/excludertypes.html you'll see that Roger Patterson has unwisely annoted (in blue) Dave Cushman's text, thusly: "A queen excluder is a physical barrier with appertures(sic) of a size that prevents a queen from passing through."
No,
no,
NO.
A queen excluder is ANY DEVICE which will prevent the queen from entering a chosen area. Brute force imprisonment is only one way. Indeed, further down that page is a section entitled "Plain Plywood" within which another technique is described.
This is exactly the technique exclusively used within the Bienenkiste beehive, albeit the excluder is positioned vertically, as these are Long Hives:
(http://i64.tinypic.com/n2miih.jpg)
That photograph shows the hive inverted, with the brood chamber starter-strips in place, and the divider which functions as a queen excluder positioned between the brood chamber and the 'super area', which still has starter-strips to be installed. As you will see the queen excluder/divider has a couple of inches gap at (what will become) the bottom, and has proved highly effective over many years.
I use exactly the same technique in my framed Long Hives, by the use of Partition (or Follower) Boards with two inches removed from their bottoms. Such modified boards still function adequately as a thermal curtain should it become necessary to reduce the effective hive volume for any reason.
For those with vertical hives, I think the alternative method described by Dave Cushman would be well-worth trying, with either a custom-made plywood board, or even just a square of plastic placed centrally over the brood frames.
LJ
Quote from: little john on February 01, 2016, 07:09:25 AM
A queen excluder is ANY DEVICE which will prevent the queen from entering a chosen area.
But for a Lang hive the screen version is much more efficient device because the second thing the QE has to achieve is free passage of the work force going in both directions.
Don't you think that multiple half inch holes, or slots cut in the perimeter of a plywood board, or a similar half-inch open perimeter gives free-er passage to the workforce, than narrow slots through which they are forced to wriggle ? When combined, these have a much greater area than the entrance to the hive itself. Also - supers can have their own entrances to optimise traffic flow, should that ever become a problem.
I only ever use narrow-slot queen excluders during queen-rearing, made from smooth s/s wire - in order to reduce wing damage to a minimum.
LJ
Quote from: little john on February 01, 2016, 09:37:35 AM
Don't you think that multiple half inch holes, or slots cut in the perimeter of a plywood board, or a similar half-inch open perimeter gives free-er passage to the workforce,
Little john I did not see such a board and if the holes are only on the perimeter I would have to say no. The bees do not have to pass through the excluder to move honey they can pass honey from one bee to another on the other side. With a screen type device there could be many bees doing this at the same time.
Quote from: Acebird on February 01, 2016, 06:11:10 PM
Quote from: little john on February 01, 2016, 09:37:35 AM
Don't you think that multiple half inch holes, or slots cut in the perimeter of a plywood board, or a similar half-inch open perimeter gives free-er passage to the workforce,
Little john I did not see such a board and if the holes are only on the perimeter I would have to say no. The bees do not have to pass through the excluder to move honey they can pass honey from one bee to another on the other side. With a screen type device there could be many bees doing this at the same time.
Acebird, could you expand on that -- describe the "screen type device" you refer to? I'm envisioning something like a framework with hardware cloth of, say, 1/4-inch openings. Is that in the ball park of what you mean?
A standard queen excluder like this
http://www.dadant.com/catalog/m00893-queen-excluder-8-frame?utm_source=google_shopping&gclid=CKPljIXF2coCFcUXHwodwa8O0A
For the most comprehensive collection of Q/X's - see: http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/excludertypes.html - he even includes the plastic types, although I've heard several negative reports about these. Somethng to do with the slot widths being distorted and letting the queens through.
LJ
Quote from: little john on February 02, 2016, 01:22:38 PM
For the most comprehensive collection of Q/X's - see: http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/excludertypes.html - he even includes the plastic types, although I've heard several negative reports about these. Somethng to do with the slot widths being distorted and letting the queens through.
LJ
More like the sharp edges damage the wings and bodies of the bees passing through - round wire provides a smooth passage
For those who use QE's maybe you could look closely at your use QE's and tell us where the polished spots are. I suspect the closer to the center you get the more polished the slots are.
What do you actually mean by polished spot?
Polished surfaces as evidence of frequent use - in that particular area (or 'spot').
The area that the bees use most frequently would have signs of wear where as the slots never used would not.