# Queen excluder yay or nay?



## KatieB (May 27, 2016)

What are your opinions on queen excluders?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

They mean that when you harvest the honey boxes you don't have to worry if brood or the queen may be in them.

They can be useful to keep the queen where you want her when raising queen cells.

They can be useful when doing combines.

They are a must have accessory for running 2 queen colonies and keeping the queens apart.

Negatives? Can't think of any unless they are abused and the queen jammed into too small of a space.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The problem with the concept of a queen excluder being effective is that old beekeeper forget that new beekeepers don't have any drawn comb. Getting bees to work through an excluder on bare foundation has never been successful in my experience unless there is a very strong sudden flow on... getting bees to work drawn comb through an excluder is much easier. I don't use them. But if you want to use them, you will need to have drawn comb or you will need to bait the bees up through the excluder. Once they start going through it, they do fine.

Here's the opinion of another New Zealander...
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm#excluders


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## KatieB (May 27, 2016)

Thank you both! Great information!


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## Chester5731 (Jan 11, 2016)

Do you think it would make a difference if there was no drawn comb but there was a top and bottom entrance?


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## orthoman (Feb 23, 2013)

I started out not using them because that was what we were taught in class. Found that there was an unlimited brood nest as MR. Bush says --- but I didn't want brood all through the hive -- I wanted to separate honey from brood. If you don't care, then you certainly don't need them. So, now I use them . 

It is true, that you may need to move up a bait frame above the excluder to get them started but after that, they seem to work above the excluder without problems. 

I don't know what you do, or if you can even use an excluder, if your are into upper entrances only.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

If you dont have drawn honey supers comb shake the bees lightly off a couple of brood frames so you leave the queen behind and put them above the excluder. Straight forward if you are using same size frames for both but still do-able by putting two medium supers on and hang several deep brood frames in the top box. The bees will just love building you some nice cut comb on the empty space at the bottom of the deep frames hanging down into two medium boxes. Once they start working thru the excluder and drawing comb, you can move the brood frames back down to the brood boxes.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I think you have gotten Good opinions on queen excluders thus far. So lets talk kinds of excluders. Metal VS plastic. I have discovered that if you are going to use an excluder invest in the good metal excluder. They are easily cleaned with a scraper, torch or hot water. If handled judiciously they will give years of service. Plastic excluders seem to be disposable. They become misshaped simply by their use, and cleaning them is a pain IMHO


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## tech.35058 (Jul 29, 2013)

details, details...
I bought some plastic excluders my first year when I was going to "try everything", but other learning experiences kept me from actually using them..
This year, I had some hives go queenless, & stored a "lot" of honey..Some of these , I allowed to become laying worker hives, through neglect, & most of their honey went away.. when anther hive started down that path, I newsprint combined over a a Q excluder.. Later I got back to check that yard, & that hive, honey crop still intact, , brood nest still functional, but found a 1/2 inch layer of dead bees on top of the Qx. appeared to be mostly drones.
another hive, I did not have the "dead bee " problem, but the bees are propolising the bottoms of the frames to the Qx (. I shift the bee space, so that I have 1/4 inch above the frame bars, & 1/8 inch below the frames, so that I can use a flat board as a top cover ....)
So ... I have started adding a clearance shim on top of my plastic excluders, with a gap in it for an above the excluder entrance. So far, so good.


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## Pete O (Jul 13, 2013)

Brood in the supers isn't really a problem great enough to justify a QE. Simply leave the frames with brood in the hive for another week or two until the brood hatches. I used a QE briefly in my first year (with undrawn frames) and had no success for the reason pointed out in Mr. Bush's reply. I've not used one since.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Do you think it would make a difference if there was no drawn comb but there was a top and bottom entrance?

No, I don't think it will help with only foundation. It will help if you have drawn comb.

>but I didn't want brood all through the hive

I've never seen brood all through a hive...


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Pete O said:


> Brood in the supers isn't really a problem great enough to justify a QE. Simply leave the frames with brood in the hive for another week or two until the brood hatches.


Unfortunately, that does not work at all for me.
When we set up to extract, we want to get through all of the hives, clean up, store the supers and be done with it.
A super here and a couple there and another one 12 miles away just ain't going to happen.

But actually it does happen with a few hives. We always have a few hives where the queen got through or around the excluder and THE ENTIRE honey super is brood.
We drop her down below the excluder, return in a couple of weeks, pull and store the super.
I would never do that on purpose, but to each their own.


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## GerrieRPh (Mar 10, 2015)

Second year keeper: pros and cons

Last year, no excluder and got an open brood box, laying the higher the better. But I wasn't planning on taking any honey off. This year, using a queen excluder above 2 deeps and topped with (in order from bottom to top) 1. Super with mixed foundation and drawn 2. foundation medium 3. Super - mostly drawn. I placed them top supered sequentially as they filled them with nectar. But man! They back filled the deeps with capped honey like nobody's business. Comb drawn in between the metal excluder bars with some drones stuck in the bars. So, I took them off last week to see if they will cap the boxes above the super and finish filling them. And I've pulled off (cut down splits) at least 10 frames of brood off this big colony this year.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

I install queen excluders 4 or 5 days before making up nucs. I aggregate brood and pollen frames in the top box above a QE, after shaking the frames free of bees. This means I can quickly and efficiently draw brood and nurse bees to make up nucs. 

Trying to pull frames directly from the broodnest without inadvertently including the queen is time consuming and subject to error. If you are making up several dozen nucs, and find a stray queen, there is no practical way of knowing where the errant queen came from. Emergency queens in booming donor hives often lead to swarms (and after swarms). Losing a queen mid-season goes bad (failed supersedure) about 30% of the time, and the problem is more severe and consequential on booming hives than on singles.

Isolating the brood for 4 or 5 days means eggs age out of the emergency queen cell stage, and this helps prevent nucs with drawn cells -- a management issue that requires a reinspection otherwise. The hatch cohort on the nuc is better fitted to the new queen laying. No nutritional drag on the hive (feeding larvae royal jelly) until the queen is up and running.

I'll run QE when I have foundationless comb that fills with drones. I let the drone hatch, and the comb backfill with honey. Interestingly, the drones often make a "boys club" on the hatched frames -- milling about in large numbers.

I'll run a QE under drawn dry comb when I am on a flow I want to isolate or avoid. This includes selecting for Poison Oak honey, isolating Broccoli and English Ivy honey (crystalizes hard) , and avoiding mixing Toyon and Avocado (dark, green, bitter) with other honeys. Otherwise, frames with some brood get mixed down into the hive, carrying the honey with it to the detriment of keeping the monofloral isolated.

Otherwise, that stack of QE mostly sits out in the weather.


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## Coach62 (Mar 26, 2016)

I like the idea of gett drone comb to use for honey above a QE. 

I have to ask, what's the deal with poison oak honey? Just taste bad or is it toxic? We don't have that issue down here.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

JWChesnut said:


> I'll run QE when I have foundationless comb that fills with drones. I let the drone hatch, and the comb backfill with honey. Interestingly, the drones often make a "boys club" on the hatched frames -- milling about in large numbers.


Interesting observation JWC I get exactly the same thing on my dedicated drone combs, once the drones are hatched they hang out in massive numbers on those combs.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Oldtimer said:


> .....once the drones are hatched they hang out in massive numbers on those combs.


Yes, and also the resultant mites in massive numbers.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Sadly I'm one of those reprobate treaters.

Happy drones ='s happy future queens.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Coach62 said:


> I have to ask, what's the deal with poison oak honey? Just taste bad or is it toxic?


Poison Oak makes fine honey in June. I isolate it because I have a "waiting list" of folks willing to pay to get the honey. These customers believe it makes a desensitizing dose to the oil urshiol (irritating principle in PO). I reserve judgement, as I find no evidence that the nectar or pollen has detectable quantities of the oil. Oil glands are visible on the flower calyx. 

I do know folks that feed chickens PO cuttings, and also swear the eggs protect them. Goats and goat milk, etc.


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

I swear since i have started beekeeping i have not been nearly as allergic to the poisions as i used to be


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## Patrick Cassidy (Apr 8, 2013)

Someone, Fatbeeman perhaps, says they wear out the bees wings squeezing through them. I just started using them this year.


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

Yay.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Someone, Fatbeeman perhaps, says they wear out the bees wings squeezing through them.

Some of the old books said that. But the common excluders at the time were punched zinc. Later they were pucnhed plastic. I haven't seen either for a while now. The plastic and the metal ones are smooth and round now.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Ha I remember those zinc ones, they were a great reason not to use excluders they really were hard on the bees!

Never really noticed they are gone in fact haven't thought about them for years, but now you bring it up have realised I haven't seen one in many years. Don't know where they all went!

Only good thing about them was they were easy to slice up with tin snips to make little queen excluded sections for certain typs of queen cages or baby nucs.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Only good thing about them was they were easy to slice up with tin snips to make little queen excluded sections for certain typs of queen cages or baby nucs.

Agreed.


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## AstroZomBEE (Aug 1, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >Only good thing about them was they were easy to slice up with tin snips to make little queen excluded sections for certain typs of queen cages or baby nucs.
> 
> Agreed.


They made burning the trash more entertaining.


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

I'm using them this year, after 10 years of not using them. Sick of getting brood in the honey supers.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

As a new user Spencer have you noticed any problems?


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

No, not yet. I'll see if it has any effect on my honey harvest when I have my 1st extraction at the beginning of August.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Good to hear. Enjoy your brood free honey harvest.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i'm putting queen excluders to use yard wide this year but in a somewhat unorthodox fashion.

most of my hives are a single 10 frame deep with medium supers. i've decided to not stack more than 5 mediums over the deep because it's too much of a hassle to have to use a step ladder.

on my best hives this year this meant harvesting one or two supers and putting them back on. some of those supers got filled and capped for a second time while others got partially filled by the time we got to the end of our spring flow.

after harvesting there are still 2 or 3 supers on each hive that are fairly full but with mostly uncapped honey and that is left for the bees. the problem is that if we don't get a good fall flow some of the colonies will brood up into the supers at the end of the season leaving the deep empty.

i would rather have them in the deep for overwintering so i'm putting excluders on after harvesting confining the queen to the deep and the first super. i figure if the fall flow is light they will just move honey down from the supers above the excluder, and if we have a good fall flow harvesting frames above the excluder will be easier.

either way the broodnest should be in the deep at close out and i when i pull the excluders before winter i can get the supers arranged just right for overwintering and ready for checkerboarding in late february.

as far as using excluders for the spring flow it's really not necessary because the bees do a good enough job keeping the brood and honey separated. i'm pulling the choicest frames one by one anyway shaking/brushing the bees off and putting them into an empty super. this approach works well for me but probably wouldn't be practical for a larger operation.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

My bees are free-rangers. They also have long fuzz, look like they're ambling around pretty lazy, and i suspect like the smoker a little too much...


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

KatieB said:


> What are your opinions on queen excluders?


There are many times I wouldn't be without them. They can be exceptionally helpful in certain circumstances. Any beek who doesn't have at least a few is probably suffering the consequences.


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