# Pros/Cons of Using a Queen Excluder?



## Ron Young (Aug 16, 2006)

I am new at this as well, only in my third year. I do not use a queen excluder at all. I currently have about four cells on each of the center four frames of one super that have brood in them. As they hatch, and the bees fill with nectar, the queen is pushed back down into the hive body. When I did my last inspection, I pulled that one super up to the top as it was mostly capped, and put a super having nectar in all cells down on top of the hive bodies. 

I had to winter the colony with one partially filled super last winter, and I had brood from the winter move up, but they quickly cleaned that up, and filled with nectar when the flow started. 

I think that in 90% of the cases, the bees will take care of moving the queen down. My only question would be in a hive set up with a top entrance, or with the adddition of an upper entrance. Not sure how that would effect things.


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

Pros:

The queen doesn't lay brood in the honey supers. This is especially nice for folks doing Ross Rounds or cut comb honey.

Cons:

Sometimes the bees don't like to cross the excluder. The broodnest quickly gets backfilled with nectar, and the hive swarms. This is why queen excluders are also called honey excluders by many.
If you have a highly productive queen and she needs more room to lay in, you lose the opportunity for higher population.

I do not use an excluder anymore. My biggest hive this year has brood almost to the top of the 4th deep box. :thumbsup: My other 'typical' hives have brood in the bottom 2 deep boxes, and sometimes into the 3rd deep box a little.


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

Pro: As a queen rearer, it's hard to set up a proper cell finisher colony without a queen excluder. 

Con: I could use a double screen, however, I'd then have to go out and either purchase or make one.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

a queen excluder will reduce to zero brooding in the honey supers... this equates to reduced labor when removing the crop plus no brooding in the supers means the supers storage is much simplier and requires no chemicals. as an alternative kelley use to provide certain foundation designs that discourage the queen from laying in honey supers.

a queen excluder properly used with a much reduced or closed front entrance and entrances built into the stack above the excluder will reduce brood nest congestion by first taking the worker force out of the broodnest and by almost totally eliminating backfilling. it can also slightly enhance the honey crop since almost all the nectar is stored above the brood nest and the worker force need not move thru the stack from one end to the other in order to deposit their load.


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## WGB (Dec 13, 2008)

I'm at the stage of beekeeping that this subject is on my mind. Tecumsehs theory sounds good to me, what do others think?


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## hoodswoods (May 15, 2009)

Tecumseh then promotes top entrances into the honey supers, with the excluder keeping the queen within her realm via the (now reduced) botton entrance - in my very short observation, climbing stairs is not any creatures desire, unless you're in the excercise equipment business.

This puts a new spin on things for me, vs doing away with the excluder entirely and just extracting broodless frames.


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## PerryBee (Dec 3, 2007)

I never had to use excluders before but 10 days ago I found queens in 3 of my hives had eggs up in my first honey supers. I moved the queens down and put excluders on and provided top entrances above the excluder. I now seem to have a problem with the workers using the upper entrances bringing in pollen by the truck load and storing it in my honey supers. I have several frames covered with it, not something I really want in my honey supers. My honey supers are 6 3/4 vs. 9 3/4 for brood boxes so moving frames down isn't possible. Any ideas on how to get them to move this pollen down?:scratch: I've closed off the upper entrances to slow this down.
Perry


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## hoodswoods (May 15, 2009)

pollen trap(s)?


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## Bee Whisperer 82 (Jun 4, 2009)

I have excluders on all my hives and one super on all. I haven't had the bees work in the supers yet. I have yet to find out if they work. I hope it isn't keeping them out.


James


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Are your other boxes below the excluder drawn and have a good supply of brood and honey?

What is above the excluder? Drawn comb or foundation?

Do you have a flow going?

If they still have room for honey above the brood in the bottom box, they may do that before moving up.

Especially if you have foundation above the excluder. If it is foundation, remove the excluder until they start drawing comb in the upper box, then add the excluder.

If you don't have a flow going, you will have to feed to get wax drawn. Otherwise they use with they bring in for brood rearing.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

MegP said:


> Do you use a queen excluder under your supers?


Yes, I use excluders. Here is what I do:

1. With foundation I wait to add the excluder until they start drawing comb in the box and then add it. Now that I have drawn frames, I put any supers with foundation above a drawn super which is above the excluder. They move up easily.

2. The previous fall I put my supers away wet. I tried setting them out for the bees to clean, but found dead bees, torn up wax and trained robber bees. I tried to put the wet supers above a inner cover, but that was too much work. I just put them away now. I don't have a bad ant problem, but if you do it might change things.

3. In the spring you need to know about the date the flow starts or which bloom signals it is about to start. About that time I look under the cover once a week to see if I can see white wax being added. This is a good sign that things are starting. Also if you see your bees starting to forage early in the morning (5:30) that is a sign that the flow is starting.

4. If I think maybe it is a little early and since my hives are near my house I put an excluder and wet honey super from last year on a strong hive. The next day I check to see if they are drying nectar in the super. If so I start adding excluders and supers.

5. This year for example, I looked under a cover one morning and saw white wax being added so I put on an excluder and a single super then went to work. When I got home in the evening I found nectar and bees on 3-4 frames in the super above the excluder. So I added excluders and supers to all of my honey producing hives. 

6. You can just add excluders and supers early if you want, but if I am going to be around I don't like to have to take them off to see what is going on so I wait until I see white wax near the tops of the frames in the top brood box. If I am going to be busy or gone, I just put them on a week or two before I think the flow will be starting.

7. I have stopped using top entrances. I couldn't see a lot of differnce and sometimes I found a bunch of pollen in the honey supers. They also seem to find the need to post guard bees at all of the other entrances.


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## icodebot (Apr 18, 2009)

This is my first year too, and I agonized over the whole excluder thing for a while because I couldn't get a clear picture on which would be better for me. I bought one, but now have no intention of using it. 

Thanks to a Michael Bush article, I decided to standardize and use all mediums. The advantage here is that once you standardize you can move any brood frames down to lower boxes and move honey stores upward. I'm just going to keep stacking on mediums as the bee's fill them. They tend to store honey above the brood nest, so eventually the queen won't move up in to the honey stores anyway. 

It makes sense to me to let the queen and the bees have as much brood space as they want. Why impose artificial limitations on them? Maybe your bees want 3 boxes for brood and 2 for honey, or 2 for brood and 3 for honey. How do you know? I figure I'll let the bees draw the line between the brood nest and honey stores. I really don't have a clue as to what they need or will end up doing.

If you decide to use one, it will be one more piece of equipment you are going to have to worry about using properly, at the right time, on the right box. When and if you get that timing down right, then you have to worry about getting the bees to cross it. For me that's too much stuff to worry about my first year, and I know I'd end up doing it wrong anyway.

I think BeeDeeTee post above proves my point. I see 7 steps, and a lot of guessing work going on in that post. Why bother?


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

wgb writes:
Tecumsehs theory sounds good to me

tecumseh:
a bit of a correction... what follows should tell ya' pretty plainly that this ain't some theory and it's construction was in no way my own.

typically when I give a little talk to a bee club here or there I begin this part of my little sermon with... 'this part of my talk is called you can teach old dogs new tricks'.

I spend my first 40 years of beekeeping believing that a queen excluder was a honey excluder primarily because my two commericial bee keeping mentors told me this was so. a few years ago I read an article (mid 1980's) that descibed a fairly exhaustive study to determine if a queen excluder was a honey excluder. after that time I tried this 'proper use of a queen excluder' myself to see out how it worked at this location. unlike the experiement I did not religiously measure square inches of brood area three time over the honey collection season to document what was occuring in the brood nest. unlike the experiement I did not close off the bottom entry entirely (since I had concerns about the hive's ability to remove bottom board debris).

I would say the results of my little experiement was a honey crop of +20% of my other hives (I think a goodly portion of this was attributed to the fact that the surplus is consolidated in one area and is not spread out over what can be an extensive brood nest). you also need to worry over fewer number of boxes in the stack (however large). Another + benefit is the setup limits the need to mess with brood frames which basically equates to the bees being a bit easier(ie gentlier) to handle.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

icodebot said:


> I think BeeDeeTee post above proves my point. I see 7 steps, and a lot of guessing work going on in that post. Why bother?


I am not sure what guessing work you are talking about. You need experience with you flow if you want to wait to put on supers at the last minute. Otherwise just put them on a month earlier. I was explaining how I decide to add them at the last minute so I don't have extra boxes on top that I have to take off to see what is happening.

icodebot, your method will work fine. I used it for about 5 years in the 1980's. As long as you never use chemicals in your hive. With all mediums that you shuffle frames it will be quite a task to know which frames were in the hive when treatments were added.

With an excluder it's simple. I have never had brood or chemicals in the honey frames. This includes oxalic, formic, thymol, etc.


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## icodebot (Apr 18, 2009)

beedeetee said:


> I am not sure what guessing work you are talking about.


You obviously have a lot of experience. For me to try to duplicate what you were describing would take a lot of guessing work on my part. That's really what I meant. 

I don't know anything about when nectar flows start in my area. I see all of my bees coming back loaded down with pollen, does that mean they aren't bringing in nectar? When they bring back lots of pollen does that mean there is a nectar flow going on in my area right now?

I'd like to know how to read the situation better.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Yes, after a few years you will know the signs of a flow in your area. In the meantime white wax on the top edges of brood frames is always a good indication.

The whole issue of when to put boxes on is unrelated to excluder use. I was just explaining how I do it since there always seems to be a lot of new users asking "when do I put honey supers on" and "why won't my bees go through the excluder to the super of foundation".

So the "guess work" is related to when to super rather than whether you should use an excluder or not or how one is used.


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## CSP (May 9, 2009)

*tecumseh... could you explain*

tecumseh... could you explain just how you go about setting up the upper entrances? I've played around with these a little bit using shims with holes in them placed between the supers, but I always end up with a lot of burr comb in the extra space created by the shim.

What sort of upper entrance are you using?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I use upper entrances exclusively. Most of my upper entrances are simply where I have slid back supers, leaving an entrance slot. This has worked very well for two years now.


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## kenr (Sep 25, 2005)

*excluders*

I,m using an excluder this year with Imri shims above the first and third honey supers because the year before last I did'nt and my royal highness came up and layed in four out of nine of my honey frames.( I use perma-comb frames).I know I may suffer with a diminished crop but I did also because of brood & eggs in my honey frames.


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