Found my queen!

[asprince]

I have a hive that I have been calling queenless for almost a month. I have been unable to find any eggs or brood in the brood body. Well...somehow she got above my excluder and turned my shallow honey super into a packed brood body. I have two issues that I would like an answer/advice.
1. How did she get in there? I have a top entrance above the excluder. Did she leave the hive and re-enter above the excluder. Or was i just careless during inspections? Could she be a new queen that entered the top entrance after her mating flight?
2. I run deeps for the brood box and mediums and one shallow supers. That is the way my mentor started me out. When I made this discovery, I made a change in my hive arrangement. From bottom to top, it was: deep, excluder, medium undrawn, ventilation spacer/top entrance, drawn shallow with honey. Now it is: deep, shallow with brood and honey, excluder, ventilation spacer/top entrance, undrawn medium. How do I move her out of the shallow and back into the deep? Do I need to change the arrangement? Thanks in advance, Steve

[Kathyp]

1.  does it matter?  don't sweat the small stuff :-)  could be any of the above.

2.  you'll get other answers from  those more experienced, but i would leave the brood on top, lose the excluder, let the brood hatch out of your shallow. queen will probably move down to lay on her own.

i like excluders sometimes.  some people never use them.  you can put it back after you have hatched your brood out if you want.  i don't know that i'd do it before.......
you can add another shallow above and put the excluder between the brood shallow and the new one.....you can remove the brood shallow after brood hatched......

thing is, i don't think anything you do will be 'wrong' as long as you don't kill your queen.

[Brian D. Bray]

Queens can often get through damaged excluders.  I don't use them except on rare occassions like retaining a swarm that might want to abscond. 

Why limit the brood chamber?  As Finsky would say; the more bees, the more honey.  Actually he says good pastures, strong hives, lots of honey.  The more room the queen has to lay eggs and build up hive strength the more honey the hive will produce.  Limiting the size of the brood chamber limits the production capability of the hive.

[asprince]

I agree, that I should not be limiting the size of the brood chamber, but I don't want to use a shallow super for expansion. I am trying to migrate to all mediums. How do I get the queen to move out?

[Kathyp]

i think if you leave that super on top and let it hatch out you'll be ok.  the queen should move down on her own looking for more space to lay.  you can pull the super or put an excluder under later if you want.

[KONASDAD]

Since your warm weather territory, I would place super under a deep and let'em draw out a deep working upwards. By fall, you'll have an empty but drawn super for next years flow waiting to be used. If you place super above an empty deep or super, I would be conscerned the brood would get chilled.