Queen excluder experience.

[mick]

Ive just been through an interesting exercise.

Put an excluder on one and a super. After 2 weeks, not much action, bees in the top super but not doing much.

Put another super on hive #2, with only 4 frames as I was waiting for more, no excluder. Bees galore, building on the walls, will add another 4 frames an an excluder on the weekend.

Ive since read that you shouldnt QE until they are working the super, so when I remove the QE on hive one on the weekend, it will be interesting to see what happens when I replace it a week later.

Its tempting to do all of this now, but the only chance I have is an hour after sunrise or 2 hours before sunset, and I dont think these are good times to go smoking and playing.

[BMAC]

You know.  Many of us refer to these things as BEE EXCLUDERS.  I run without QE.  Towards the end of the season it takes a little bit longer to go thru the supers and pull out all the brood before them come home, however the girls sure fill more slots and do it faster..........

[jdpro5010]

I have pretty good luck by pulling one frame of brood above excluder when I first put Q.E. on.  This has worked very well for me, and then at the end of the year this is just one of the combs I melt out in my yearly rotation.  Good Luck  :)

[dpence]

If you have drawn comb in your supers, an excluder seems ok.  New foundation is a different story sometimes.  Depends on the race in my experience.  The Russians filled two supers above an excluder starting with new foundation, however I have had Italians that would hardly draw on it over an excluder, so ended up pulling it out to get them going.  Since then, I have switched to using a Imirie Shim with reasonable luck.  I have had a little drone comb built on the bottoms sometimes if no excluder is used.  Just my .02.

David 

[Brian D. Bray]

I have pretty good luck by pulling one frame of brood above excluder when I first put Q.E. on.  This has worked very well for me, and then at the end of the year this is just one of the combs I melt out in my yearly rotation.  Good Luck  :)

Baiting a super with a frame from below is one way to get the bees to cross through the excluder, the other is to wait a week or until they've started working the frames in the supers before adding the excluder.   The fact that almost every bee book I've ever read omits this jewel of knowledge is unfortunate and creates a lot of confusion for the beginning beekeeper.
If your supers are the same size as your brood chambers you can use option 1, if they are of different sizes then use option 2.  Many (like me) leave excluders out entirely and have little problems other than an occasional patch of drone brood in the honey supers.  If your equipment is all the same size the fix is easy, just swap a drone frame for an all honey frame from the brood chamber.  The outside frames in each brood chamber are almost exclusively honey storage frames to the swap out is easy to do.

[BeeHopper]

Never used one  :)

There was one occasion last summer where the Queen went up into the super and laid a few drone eggs at the very bottom of the frame, really not an issue.

[mick]

Ok well today I caught one hive doing a very good impression of swarming. Seemed too big for orientation time to me.

Anyway so I went in with the smoker, removed the QE, I also removed the QE off the other one as they did would not move to the super above, despite my luring them with brood.

[BjornBee]

There are several things you can do to lessen any negative impact (real or percieved) in using queen excluders.

Two options....

1) I have upper entrances for all my second brood boxes. It's just a simple drilled hole. The bees storing nectar above the brood chamber will often be seen using this entrance. I will place the queen excluder on, and put a couple supers above which also have a hole as an entrance. The hole in the top brood chamber is plugged. All the bees that were using the hole in the brood box now just readjust themselves to the new hole in the next super up, which is about 6 inches away. The bees take to it very easily as the are loaded down and just want a hole to enter. You now have nbees entering above the queen excluder within seconds of placing them. (And this cuts down on brood chamber traffic, etc.)

2) You can also use plastic excluders by turning them sideways. Just rotate them 90 degrees. What you have is an excluder that will hang out both sides an inch or so. But what you have created in an inch space in both the front and back of the boxes where bees can travel between the brood chamber and the supers wihtout actually going through the queen excluder at all. The queen very rarily goes to the end of the frames and then moves up or down. You may get 1 queen in 25 that will find a way around a turn sideways queen excluder. You can NOT use this method with wood bound metal (who wanted burr comb anyways), but you can with plastic QE's. Some use the metal (not woodbound) anyways as it allows a good space for air flow but not enough for bees to use.

Both these options are a ongoing management item (holes) which have many secondary benefits, or are a one time task (QE sideways). Baiting (unattended brood, queens being raised, etc.) and coming back a second time once the bees are working a super (now you need to ensure the queen is not above, etc) can cause problems and add additional tasks.

[mick]

Ok, 6 or so weeks later, good news and bad news.

The once weak hive, it was down to a thousand tops, is booming and loving the third super.

The evil feral vampire bees that have annoyed me for 12 months are not in good shape. No movement at all into the third super. Not much action in the second either. Not many bees IMO. I actually had one fall off a frame, havent had that happen before, she may have just had a gutfull of honey. I thought they might have been sick, but they look healthy and whats there is working well, lots of pollen coming in. I fear I this hive might be queenless or have swarmed when I put the excluder on.

I will know more in a few days when I have a good look.