Bees building comb on bottom of queen excluder

[potionlady]

My bees are buidling comb on the queen excluder and have not move past one super above it.  Why?  Should I remove or at least clean the excluder?  I want to but am afraid to disturb without some expert advise.  Please help :?

[Bill W.]

Most likely, they don't need the space.  Also likely, they don't want to get too far from the queen.

Many people here will tell you that a queen excluder is generally counter-productive and I tend to agree.  I only use and excluder when I am ready to harvest a super that has some brood in it.  I put the excluder on long enough for the remaining brood to hatch out without allowing the queen to lay more eggs.  This seems to work pretty well.

Having an excluder on all season, I got the same results you report - slower move up and tons of burr comb and propolizing.

So, maybe you should take it off and see how things go.

[Brian D. Bray]

My bees are buidling comb on the queen excluder and have not move past one super above it.  Why?  Should I remove or at least clean the excluder?  I want to but am afraid to disturb without some expert advise.  Please help :?

Bees hate to move through an excluder, it is like an inner top.  Unless the bees are baited they won't go through.  I would suggest leaving an excluder off completely, but if you insist on using one wait until the bees start working at least 3 frames in the super before you put the excluder back on.

One of the major errors, IMHO, in beekeeping books is that they forget to tell you the consequences of putting the excluder on too early.  Always wait until the bees are working the super.  Rule #5.

[BrokWing]

Have you thought about putting a feed jar of syrup / sugar water on the lid? If you have a wood lid with a hole in it for a jar lid to set down into it. If you don't have a outer cover for a jar to sit in. You can make a feeder out of a zip lock bag, if you have an extra super or a spacer between the super & the lid so the lid or inner cover doesn't smash the bag of syrup - you can put a zip-lock bag of sugar water on top of the frames of the super - fill the bag half full, at the most. Then slice a few small slits in the middle of the bag, on the top side of the bag. The bees will go up to thru the super to get to the syrup. They some times need something to induce them up into the super. This is what I've done if my bees are slow to enter the super.

[Michael Bush]

Cleaning comb off the excluder is a life time job.  I wouldn't take that job.  Leave it alone.