# Are queen excluders really necessary?



## Bueff (Oct 17, 2020)

It all depends on what you would call slowing down production. 
We use them on all our hives, the girls go gangbusters at the moment. 
The benefit of the excluders is, one doesn’t have to worry about brood frames in the honey super.
If you run a couple of hives for your fun, you won’t need them , but if you’re planning bigger things, the time saving is huge.


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## moomin_cottage (Nov 23, 2021)

Thanks for the tip!! At the moment I only have one hive and it’s just for fun, so I shouldn’t worry too much. Thank you!!


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## Some Bloke (Oct 16, 2021)

Queens don't usually cross honey, and there are some beekeepers who use this to add supers without a QE. If your brood have an arc of honey about 2" thick above them it:s generally OK. Bit tricky to do in marginal forage areas though, where bees may actually deplete that band of honey during a dearth.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

My experience is that queens more commonly do cross honey. I think individual colonies develop growth and resource storage patterns that vary considerably. Relative abundance and how steady or peaky will affect development as will ratio of drawn to undrawn foundation. Amount of drone comb available has a huge affect on whether queens go in search of cells to lay drone in. If your method of getting max honey production includes minimising drone comb then there will be high motivation for the queen and her consorts to cross honey to lay.
Comb drawing in marginally cold conditions results in less than picture perfect laying patterns and that described honey arch becomes rather dispersed and raggedy. Your acceptance of or aversions to having some brood in your supers has an effect on your choices. Certainly you can allow free range of the queen which will commonly result in some brood emerging there but those empty cells will most likely be backfilled with honey. You wont have those nice pristine white frames of comb but it is quite workable.

If you choose to run single deep brood box colonies which is an efficient use of equipment you definitely will value the excluder. I played with having excluder on and off a ten frame dadant depth colony last summer. For a while queeny would stay down but when you placed a fresh super above she would be up there in short order.

Lots of different scenarios; someone starting out with no drawn honey supers can have difficulty getting bees to go thru an excluder to start drawing out the new foundation. That needs workarounds to prevent swarming. Lots of "all depends" apply. No one right answer.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

crofter said:


> My experience is that queens more commonly do cross honey.


This year I had one end up threw the QE and above 2 boxs of capped honey, sucks when you just blew als the bees out of the supers and find brood.... that queen never made it back 

look to what commercial honey producers in your area are doing, I bet most if not all run QEs..

Necessary....no
but neither is foundation or frames, or langs....
but they are the "standard" way as they provide the beekeeper advantages


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## Jim Braun (Nov 8, 2019)

My mentor doesn't use queen excluders at all. I helped him pull supers last year and extract honey the next day. We got 25 supers and of those there were maybe 8-10 frames with brood. Those didn't get extracted, just set aside and recycled back into his hives. He has 80-100 hives and I only helped him on 2 of his 8 yards. He is frugal on some things in his business.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Jim Braun said:


> My mentor doesn't use queen excluders at all. I helped him pull supers last year and extract honey the next day. We got 25 supers and of those there were maybe 8-10 frames with brood. Those didn't get extracted, just set aside and recycled back into his hives. He has 80-100 hives and I only helped him on 2 of his 8 yards. He is frugal on some things in his business.


How late does he wait to pull supers? I know a fellow who does similar with similar results but does not extract till late september and any brood rearing then will have been pushed down into lower boxes. Also, how many boxes high, brood and honey?


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

I use QE to keep the queen and her brood in the brood nest which allows me to keep the honey comb in the supers clean of brood residues. IMO honey combs free of brood cocoons results in a more agreeable end product.

I recently heard a well respected and successful beekeeper explain that he doesn't use Queen Excluders in honey production hives as he feels they
limit the laying of a prolific queen who wants to expand the brood nest upward as vertical movement is preferred by the bees over horizontal movement. 
That said, I use QE's over single deep brood boxes (8 frames in a 10 frame box with a frame feeder taking up the open space) and have seen no evidence that it limits the laying of queens, prolific or otherwise.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

Isn't preventing the formation of or opening the honey dome the central tenet of Walt Wright's swarm prevention strategy?

My point being, by relying on the honey band to prevent the queen from moving up would we be increasing the chance of swarming?

I use QEs because I use Snelgrove Boards.

Alex


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

I haver had problems with a honey dome causing swarming. I run two 10 frame deep broods. One has to make room for the queen to lay below the dome. One also has to have supers up top so bees don't back fill nest with nectar honey.

A simple way to make laying space in the bottom deep is to periodically remove one or both outside frames which are usually honey and insert drawn/blank comb in the brood nest. 

I also run two side bottom entrances of about 2 inches each( block the center). This keeps drafts away from center frames and queen will lay right to near bottom of frames in bottom brood.

In my experience, a queen excluder results in plenty nectar getting stored in perimeter of brood nest. This is less bees being raised and some swarming pressure as well.

And I do get some brood, from time to time, in the honey supers. Just need to work around it.


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## Jim Braun (Nov 8, 2019)

Crofter, Walter usually runs double deep brood chambers. Some of the hives had 3 supers. He also has 8-12 colonies in each yard. We pulled supers in early August. He didn't get all of his yards finished until mid-September. I think that had more to do with his workload than anything else. He started a Blueberry and Blackberry garden a few years ago and I know that kept him busy in the summer selling at the local farmers markets.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

It depends on what you want from your hives.

Honey from brood comb doesn't look or taste like honey from honey comb. However, a tiny bit of brood comb honey won't have that much effect on your honey quality.

As far as swarm prevention is concerned, it is one of the three things a beekeeper needs to do to be successful. There are a lot of strategies, and how well they work varies a lot depending on the skill of the beekeeper, the variety of bees, the weather and honey flow, and probably a few other variables. Skill of the beekeeper is pretty important. I have had limited success, because I am a bad beekeeper, as I have said before.

Personally, I use queen excluders, as it is a good way to keep the queen where I can find her, and It keeps the honey comb clean. It is also necessary to use queen excluders if you try to make a 2 queen hive. If the 2 queen hive occurs naturally, then it isn't necessary, although how long the bees will keep 2 queens is highly variable.

One time a queen excluder got me in trouble is I was at the hive one morning, and I saw a queen on the landing board by the lower entrance. She looked like a laying queen, and I had no idea why she was there. I watched a minute, and there was a single worker attending her, rather nervously. It was probably 45 or 50 degrees out, and the queen looked sluggish, but otherwise healthy. So I picked her up by her wings and put her at the upper entrance. She walked right in, and it looked like the bees were happy to see her. I had a double upper entrance, an arrangement like a snellgrove board, but with a queen excluder instead of a double screen. So there was an entrance above the queen excluder, and one below. Thinking more about the welfare of the queen than the configuration of the hive, I put her in the top entrance, above the queen excluder.

After she was in the hive four days, I looked for queen cells and fresh brood, and found none. So I tried a frame with eggs, but they didn't make a queen.

I repeated this a couple more times, but they had no brood, and no interest in raising a queen. Eventually I looked in the honey super, and discovered that the queen was alive and well, and laying up a storm. Happy for my queen, glad I had all deeps, and that hive turned out quite well that year.

Like everything about beekeeping, if you ask 10 beekeepers, you will get 11 opinions.

The bees don't care.

Jon


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## gator75 (Apr 21, 2021)

When I watched a forager work for 30 seconds to get through my QE, I removed it. My idea is to take 4-5 of the unused honey frames from the winter and put them in the middle of the super in the spring.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

gator75 said:


> When I watched a forager work for 30 seconds to get through my QE, I removed it. My idea is to take 4-5 of the unused honey frames from the winter and put them in the middle of the super in the spring.


Maybe she was not trying to get through but just had a mite she was trying to rub off.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I run triple deeps. I only ever had one queen that wouldn't brood down in the bottom boxes. Tried a lot to get her to settle down there and wouldn't. So used a queen excluder that one time.
Occasionally there's some brood in a super (typically drone brood), but it's not often enough to bother with it. I'd rather the queen stays in the box then swarms because I'm not checking them very often during honey flow. 

Queens are less hesitant to cross honey than is typically hinted at in my experience. But given space, it's not a big deal. There's people who run single deeps and rotate frames up above excluder... that just wouldn't work for me as I don't do much touching of bees after late May/early June and, frankly, do not have that kind of time to dedicate to bees with as many colonies as I run.


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## Akademee (Apr 5, 2020)

I think an important detail that gets missed with Queen Excluders is that bees need a reason to go through it. I have found that even if my hives are going gangbusters, if I put a box of empty foundation above a queen excluder, they generally will not go through the effort of touching it, because why would they, there's nothing up there for them. However, if I put a few brood combs above it, or a box of drawn, but empty, honeycomb, then they go through the effort with no problem.

I think this might be where a lot of beginner beekeeper disappointment with queen excluders comes from since they physically do not have the drawn comb resources to inspire the bees to deal with the queen excluder.

Also, clean your dang excluders people, that little scraper tool is worth it.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I think that term so often used "honey excluder" is deliberately derogatory rhetoric that discourages people from assessing their relative pros and cons in a neutral atmosphere.

A very colorful and emotional grabber that performs _way above its weight_!


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## gator75 (Apr 21, 2021)

I'd like to add that for a backyard beekeeper I like to give my bees full reign of the hive. I have 3 total. It's easy to pull a frame if there's eggs and drop it in the super below. I inspect every honey frame before extraction.

For someone with 20 hives up to commercial, excluders may make a lot more sense.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

crofter said:


> I think that term so often used "honey excluder" is deliberately derogatory rhetoric that discourages people from assessing their relative pros and cons in a neutral atmosphere.
> 
> A very colorful and emotional grabber that performs _way above its weight_!


I think you're right crofter.
My experience is that by using a queen excluder I maximize the honey my bees make by making the brood nest as efficient a space as possible for the bees which then enables me to grow the population of the colony to match the flows. As mentioned single deep brood boxes (or 2 mediums if I ran out ) with QE over and supers on top.









A couple of helpful maneuvers I found when using excluders:
-You may notice some upper drilled entries in the supers above the QE. They are never open during our active swarm season and have a piece of tape closing them off until swarm season is over. Don't want to ruin the fine honey in the supers by having a stray queen take up living and laying up there unexpectedly.
-Always use drawn comb over a excluder early in the season, foundation filled boxes always go on later during a heavier flow. In fact, I always use drawn comb early in the season whether over a QE or on top of a resource hive without a QE. Gives them a place to put spring nectar early on keeping the brood nest clear of nectar and honey from
the get go.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

If your brood boxes become a mix of scattered brood areas with interspersed nectar and pollen the queen has to jump around to find empty cells instead of developing a nice efficient circular and repeating pattern of laying and emergence. Once established in either mode it is hard to change without taking action. I notice in a colony with a single deep brood box under an excluder that very very little capped honey accumulates. Now your queens in your flow conditions might influence things somewhat. I dont usually need all of 10 frames for the queen so I pull out frames getting too much honey deposited and replace with foundation. They go into nucs. With my flows in two deeps the patterns get disrupted and dispersed and the queen is up and down like one finger typing.

My fingers and back are eliminating lifting deeps so singles are a better option. Pretty much necessitates excluders. With my flow a single is more than enough brood area.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

gator75 said:


> I'd like to add that for a backyard beekeeper I like to give my bees full reign of the hive. I have 3 total. It's easy to pull a frame if there's eggs and drop it in the super below. I inspect every honey frame before extraction.
> 
> For someone with 20 hives up to commercial, excluders may make a lot more sense.


If you are using all one size frames, it simplifies matters. As mentioned above if a super frame gets layed up it becomes a brood frame with no loss. All depends on your methods and philosophy. No good or bad only what most suits your operation


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

crofter said:


> No good or bad only what most suits your operation


I agree.
I'll continue using single deep brood boxes with QE on top as they work so well but the picture I posted will be a relic from my operation if I can eliminate all the deep honey supers I have been using. They have become quite the chore come extraction time for me.
I'm trying to work them out and use medium honey supers, or even shallows if I can find a good deal on a nearby load of them.


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## j.dickhdequip (Nov 4, 2021)

moomin_cottage said:


> I’ve read that queen excluders can slow honey production significantly, so are they really necessary? I’ve read that they’re not entirely natural as in the wild, the queen has free reign of the hive. Is it an issue when collecting honey if there is brood in amongst the honey?


I am not sure about slowing honey down, but a couple of people that I know commercially who run allot of hives, the never use the queen excluders. What they do is that once a super is full of honey, and if not full of honey rearrange the frames so that at least 1 super is full of honey, placing the empty one in between. The queen will lay there in the empty super but the bees will push the queen down as room diminishes in the super. Its actually very interesting since I have tried this, and it works.


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## gator75 (Apr 21, 2021)

crofter said:


> If you are using all one size frames, it simplifies matters. As mentioned above if a super frame gets layed up it becomes a brood frame with no loss. All depends on your methods and philosophy. No good or bad only what most suits your operation


Agreed. I use a single deep and single medium for brood. I can swap medium frames between top brood and super.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

I use excluders.
The reason is the residue from brood rearing darkens the honey, makes it slightly cloudy and affects the flavor in a subtle, negative way. 
Also the comb becomes more brittle when brood is raised in it making uncapping a little more trouble.

These are small things, but they matter to me so I use the excluder.


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## Gypsi (Mar 27, 2011)

I do not use queen excluders. But I'm in an area with just barely enough flow to make it worth keeping bees. If they don't go thru the excluder I'm in trouble. If I have more than 2 hives I can't even get honey, they eat it all. I don't have a lot of trouble with my 2 queens going upstairs to lay, but I might add one or 2 frames of foundation a year. I have a freezer full of comb and I can pick and choose what I want in my supers. The ladies seem to oblige. For swarm prevention, I barely feed. I observed when I used to feed I didn't always get the jar off before our brief flow, and I had a lot more swarms. This year, following the great freeze I slapped a jar of syrup on each hive in early March to get them going, and I think I gave them one when it quit raining in June, one in July after I stole the super full of honey, and returned their empty comb to the super, and one of 2:1 in late November / early December after I stole a little fall honey. I pulled off half a jar before it got cold and refrigerated it. They have plenty of honey. I think finding a balance for your location is very important. I am a hobby beekeeper


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

When I was a young beekeeper with 300 colonies, I did not own a queen excluder and part of the extracting fun was bringing brood and sometimes a queen back to the honey house as the bees do not easily leave brood. Now I run a queen excluder always because it makes life so much easier and If you are putting drawn supers on over the excluder that were properly stored wet and sticky, the bees have absolutely no reticence in working thru the excluder. I do not think metal or plastic excluders damage bees and have seen no reputable study finding they do.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Vance G said:


> When I was a young beekeeper with 300 colonies, I did not own a queen excluder and part of the extracting fun was bringing brood and sometimes a queen back to the honey house as the bees do not easily leave brood. Now I run a queen excluder always because it makes life so much easier and If you are putting drawn supers on over the excluder that were properly stored wet and sticky, the bees have absolutely no reticence in working thru the excluder. I do not think metal or plastic excluders damage bees and have seen no reputable study finding they do.


That damaging of bees wings probably goes back to the time when excluders were sheets of Zinc metal which had the openings created by shearing out narrow slugs. The edges left behind were very sharp. Nothing at all like the spot welded wire or plastic of modern excluders.


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## KevinWI (Mar 18, 2018)

Thousands and thousands of beekeepers all over the world have used queen excluders for decades...and make a d a m n good living...and yet this topic keeps coming up.
There are times when there just ISN"T much of a honey flow out there and I think this is why this topic keeps coming up.... I have hives that sit in the same apiary....one hive will produce a ton of honey, the other barely enough to make it to winter....same number of bees...just luck of the draw...like dogs...some are champions, some are just pets...from the same litter.
There is way more evidence that QE don't exclude honey than there is that it does.
Another bonus of a QE is no brood up in the supers at any time...which means no dark comb nor possibility of wax moth larvae damage during winter storage. Larvae burrow under cocoons and feed on the waste product of bee larvae. I don't want that in my honey.


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## LAlldredge (Aug 16, 2018)

When I opened them during a drought year and saw them struggling to get through it I removed them and never looked back. It can create issues with the queen moving about but my goal for keeping bees has never been about the harvest. They are in harmony without it and that’s enough for me.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

KevinWI said:


> Thousands and thousands of beekeepers all over the world have used queen excluders for decades...and make a d a m n good living...and yet this topic keeps coming up.
> There are times when there just ISN"T much of a honey flow out there and I think this is why this topic keeps coming up.... I have hives that sit in the same apiary....one hive will produce a ton of honey, the other barely enough to make it to winter....same number of bees...just luck of the draw...like dogs...some are champions, some are just pets...from the same litter.
> There is way more evidence that QE don't exclude honey than there is that it does.
> Another bonus of a QE is no brood up in the supers at any time...which means no dark comb nor possibility of wax moth larvae damage during winter storage. Larvae burrow under cocoons and feed on the waste product of bee larvae. I don't want that in my honey.


Kevin IMO the opposite of your first sentence is also a true statement.

Thousands and thousands of beekeepers all over the world have not used queen excluders for decades...and make a d a m n good living...and yet this topic keeps coming up.

seems a personal preference, and there is unlimited brood nest and long hives, where they do not result in the desired effect.



easy answer to the OP "no"

GG


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## KevinWI (Mar 18, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> Kevin IMO the opposite of your first sentence is also a true statement.
> 
> Thousands and thousands of beekeepers all over the world have not used queen excluders for decades...and make a d a m n good living...and yet this topic keeps coming up.
> 
> ...


well, to be fair, a queen cannot fill 10 deep frames full of brood...it's mathematically impossible....she can, if allowed, lay IN more than 10 frames. My last sentence is a very good reason TO use QE vs not, especially since there is no evidence it reduces honey production. So...in conclusion, there is an ADDED BENEFIT to using a QE, while there is certainly at least one big detractor to NOT use one. 
But yes...personal preference...I worked for a commercial guy who used deeps for both honey and brood...we'd spend DAYS cleaning out boxes of frames stored where wax moths destroyed the comb...he had mediums as well, so they weren't interchangeable brood nests...they were never damaged. .

Yes..it's personal choice.... Ian doesn't have much of a wax moth issue up in Manitoba, but there are no migratory keepers bringing wax moth's up from Florida...not the case here in the states.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

KevinWI said:


> well, to be fair, a queen cannot fill 10 deep frames full of brood...it's mathematically impossible....she can, if allowed, lay IN more than 10 frames. My last sentence is a very good reason TO use QE vs not, especially since there is no evidence it reduces honey production. So...in conclusion, there is an ADDED BENEFIT to using a QE, while there is certainly at least one big detractor to NOT use one.
> But yes...personal preference...I worked for a commercial guy who used deeps for both honey and brood...we'd spend DAYS cleaning out boxes of frames stored where wax moths destroyed the comb...he had mediums as well, so they weren't interchangeable brood nests...they were never damaged. .
> 
> Yes..it's personal choice.... Ian doesn't have much of a wax moth issue up in Manitoba, but there are no migratory keepers bringing wax moth's up from Florida...not the case here in the states.


Kevin
we will have to agree to disagree

well, to be fair, a queen cannot fill 10 deep frames full of brood...it's mathematically impossible....she can, if allowed, lay IN more than 10 frames.
this statement totally tosses out the window the "normal" ways bees make a nest, honey outer shell, pollen stores inside that shell then brood in the middle. I do not want the whole 10 frames with brood, I want a normal nest, And a better statement is "my queens do not fill 10 frames" I have had several 3 deep hives where there was way more that 10 frames of brood. we can quibble if it was "wall to wall" which IMO is temperature dependent, and the significance of temporary storage in the brood nest for nectar, (helps with moisture control). and allows a big nectar day, process it later.

BTW there are added benefits of an open brood nest else why do it. 
An excluder can limit brood production, bees carry honey, limit bees is limiting honey.
and the brood nest is used for more than just brood, so the loss of temp storage close to the entrance has an impact.

BTW I use excluders, but I still disagree  usually QE over the 3rd or 4th box.

GG
Again may be easier to manage and use less parts, to do 1 deep but in general, it is not for "everyone"


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Well GG I have to agree with Kevin here, but I am taking a different direction and wanting to make single brood hives work. (maybe Dadant depth though). For sure 3 or 4 boxes high colonies dont fit my pistol! Simply cant hack the lifting any more. Now if you are putting a big value in the number of bees produced and use them to advantage in nucs and splits then you are shifting the relative value of honey production. If your typical losses are high then replacement value becomes more of an issue.

I dont know exactly how it could be refereed but I would put a wager on that more honey could be produced per unit of labor and wooden ware using singles and queen excluders than without. Depends a lot on how you evaluate labor and equipment costs


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Below is a photo of 2 medium frames that were over the queen excluder of my single deep brood box. The bees clean the cells for the queen to lay in but she is confined to the deep by the excluder. The deep at this point is nearly all brood on the 8 deep frames in the box (the rest of the space occupied by a frame feeder).The cleaned cells eventually get filed with nectar then honey as the brood nest begins to contract in the deep later in the season as the bees naturally slow.
My take is that although I confine the nest to the deep the bees act as if the brood nest is about to expand vertically and the queen performs at peak efficiency( as do the nurse bees) with a compact brood nest, room above for stores, movement of bees through the QE as if it were not there and clean honey supers for a high quality end product .
Upon harvest I only take the supers above the first medium sitting on the QE. The bottom medium on the QE becomes part of the winter brood nest in September by reversing the two boxes so the medium (many times full of honey for winter) gets placed on the bottom board, the deep brood box with frame feeder in it above. The bees have 2+ months to organize their hive for winter moving the honey up. 
Below the photo of the 2 medium frames is a photo of the winter configuration after the quick switch of the medium to below the deep in the fall allowing me to judge the stores and usually requiring little supplemental feed.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

As long as there are new beekeepers, and old beekeepers with different opinions this subject, as well as many others, will continue to come up. 

Alex


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

crofter said:


> Well GG I have to agree with Kevin here, but I am taking a different direction and wanting to make single brood hives work. (maybe Dadant depth though). For sure 3 or 4 boxes high colonies dont fit my pistol! Simply cant hack the lifting any more. Now if you are putting a big value in the number of bees produced and use them to advantage in nucs and splits then you are shifting the relative value of honey production. If your typical losses are high then replacement value becomes more of an issue.
> 
> I dont know exactly how it could be refereed but I would put a wager on that more honey could be produced per unit of labor and wooden ware using singles and queen excluders than without. Depends a lot on how you evaluate labor and equipment costs


totally agree on unit of labor and unit of wooden ware. 

But the bees I have,, keep 2-3 pollen frames and 1 each on the outside for honey, so to get 10 open frames I would need 2 deeps. If I took the pollen and honey away they might fit all the brood in 1 10F deep but then in winter I would need to some how add it back, the "labor to do all that" would in time mitigate the 20$ for frames and foundation, and 4-5 bucks worth of wood for the 1 extra box either

moving the boxes ya in time I wouldn't be able to do that. shifting to 8F seems to help.

yes I always need to recover a few and It is a performance game the queen who wins is the new Queen mother.
Under an excluder in a single box they would all look the same. the really great ones would swarm out.
Also selling/giving NUCs away so splits are OK for me top Play with as they are typically in a 5 frame box.

so really a "deep" frame is what 1.5 , 1.6 normal frames,, we are then talking semantics, 1 deep of 18 inches.....

Sorry Kevin if I seemed harsh.

GG


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

I guess it all comes down to different strokes for different folks, no?


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

AHudd said:


> As long as there are new beekeepers, and old beekeepers with different opinions this subject, as well as many others, will continue to come up.
> 
> Alex


As it should, more than one way to accomplish a thing in keeping.
IMO no wrong answer just lots of right answers.

new keepers just need to understand that there are rarely hard and fast rules in keeping, almost as many ways to do something as the folks doing it. If I was in Texas, I likely would be doing single deeps, but I am in Michigan.
I have done singles, Deep + medium, Deep +Deep, Deep +deep + Medium, 3 deep , 4 deep , 2 deep + 2 Medium, And a few more. With the length of the winter and the unpredictability of spring, the 3 Box choices, consistently come to spring better. Could be the chimney Height, or some reason I am not fully into understanding, but I do keep the results in mind.
And I do need some spring splits so the biggie size hives work for my needs better. And for the first 35 years I did not feed a drop of Syrup, so that likely also has an impact, Hard IMO up here to get a single thru winter and not need feed at some point in the late winter or spring.

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

clyderoad said:


> Below is a photo of 2 medium frames that were over the queen excluder of my single deep brood box. The bees clean the cells for the queen to lay in but she is confined to the deep by the excluder. The deep at this point is nearly all brood on the 8 deep frames in the box (the rest of the space occupied by a frame feeder).The cleaned cells eventually get filed with nectar then honey as the brood nest begins to contract in the deep later in the season as the bees naturally slow.
> My take is that although I confine the nest to the deep the bees act as if the brood nest is about to expand vertically and the queen performs at peak efficiency( as do the nurse bees) with a compact brood nest, room above for stores, movement of bees through the QE as if it were not there and clean honey supers for a high quality end product .
> Upon harvest I only take the supers above the first medium sitting on the QE. The bottom medium on the QE becomes part of the winter brood nest in September by reversing the two boxes so the medium (many times full of honey for winter) gets placed on the bottom board, the deep brood box with frame feeder in it above. The bees have 2+ months to organize their hive for winter moving the honey up.
> Below the photo of the 2 medium frames is a photo of the winter configuration after the quick switch of the medium to below the deep in the fall allowing me to judge the stores and usually requiring little supplemental feed.
> ...


so do they then in the 2 months move all that honey up to the top?

so you want the frame feeder in the top , and the brood in the top by spring right?
If I put most of the stores under the cluster in Sept, they would be at the top and starved by spring.

do you like the one piece plastic frames?

GG


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Gray Goose said:


> so do they then in the 2 months move all that honey up to the top?
> 
> so you want the frame feeder in the top , and the brood in the top by spring right?
> If I put most of the stores under the cluster in Sept, they would be at the top and starved by spring.
> ...


Yes they move the honey up as long as there is "flying weather". Seems they hate honey below brood. Lite hives are fed syrup in the frame feeder and it gets put above the active brood nest too so between the honey from below and any syrup I give them there is feed high in the hive. I leave the feeders in all year an try to place on the cold side of the hive for buffer in winter so I know where they are and don't have to store them at other times. One caution is that the side of the hive with the freeder will always feel lighter than the side without, I heft for weight, so it's easy to get misled into thinking they maybe lite if you don't place the feeder on the same side in all hives in the yard so you know to expect it, or only heft one side and it happens to be the "lite" side.

Yes I like the feeder in top to winter with. The bees will usually be found in the top too come first inspection in the spring. They move honey above the brood nest if given enough time=good weather in the fall to do so. I'm sure problems would occur if the manipulation is done too late in the fall or if the weather is already cold and they weren't given enough time to organize themselves for winter, which they are very capable of doing as you know. Have some gotten caught with feed in the wrong place, sure, some have but not many over the years. Seems like most of them that have been unable to get themselves ready didn't have the population to get it done and I probably should have put them into a 4/4 nuc or similar so think of it as beekeeper error. I recall a few found dead out that had queen related problems, queenless or old queen an they pooped out but that's my fault too. Colonies in good shape for winter, we say "set", have no problem organizing the hive.

No I do not like the plastic frames and especially so when used for honey in the supers, they are too hard to handle (flex when heavy, slippery and too thin for the hands) when uncapping and extracting. I put up with them for brood. They sure are easy to pop in when short though.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

KevinWI said:


> There are times when there just ISN"T much of a honey flow out there and I think this is why this topic keeps coming up....





AHudd said:


> As long as there are new beekeepers, and old beekeepers with different opinions this subject, as well as many others, will continue to come up.
> 
> Alex


GG,

I need to stop being so lazy with my commenting. I forget we are not having an in person discussion where everyone hears what is being said and to whom.  I wasn't voicing displeasure with the subject being brought up again, I was just adding to what Kevin said.

Alex


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> Yes they move the honey up as long as there is "flying weather". Seems they hate honey below brood. Lite hives are fed syrup in the frame feeder and it gets put above the active brood nest too so between the honey from below and any syrup I give them there is feed high in the hive. I leave the feeders in all year an try to place on the cold side of the hive for buffer in winter so I know where they are and don't have to store them at other times. One caution is that the side of the hive with the freeder will always feel lighter than the side without, I heft for weight, so it's easy to get misled into thinking they maybe lite if you don't place the feeder on the same side in all hives in the yard so you know to expect it, or only heft one side and it happens to be the "lite" side.
> 
> Yes I like the feeder in top to winter with. The bees will usually be found in the top too come first inspection in the spring. They move honey above the brood nest if given enough time=good weather in the fall to do so. I'm sure problems would occur if the manipulation is done too late in the fall or if the weather is already cold and they weren't given enough time to organize themselves for winter, which they are very capable of doing as you know.


I put some partially filled supers under three hives this past fall to see if they would move it up. We have had some good flying days since then, so I am hopeful they have moved the honey up. The weather people say we are going to have 5 days of good weather, I think I will have a look. Your post has bolstered my confidence.


Alex


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

AHudd said:


> I put some partially filled supers under three hives this past fall to see if they would move it up. We have had some good flying days since then, so I am hopeful they have moved the honey up. The weather people say we are going to have 5 days of good weather, I think I will have a look. Your post has bolstered my confidence.
> 
> 
> Alex


Please post your findings.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> Please post your findings.


Will do.

Alex


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

AHudd said:


> I put some partially filled supers under three hives this past fall to see if they would move it up. We have had some good flying days since then, so I am hopeful they have moved the honey up. The weather people say we are going to have 5 days of good weather, I think I will have a look. Your post has bolstered my confidence.
> 
> 
> Alex


I also do a nadir with honey/wet frames/partially filled.
in general to a hive that needs feed or space.
my timing is earlier due to the locale.
works really well, unless the hive is weak.

GG


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

AHudd said:


> Will do.
> 
> Alex


If you could notice where the active brood nest is located that would be of interest. 
Without influencing your inspection or observations, I've found the central broodnest ("active") to relocate lower in the hive shortly after placing the medium containing honey under the active brood box in the early fall than they were previously.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> If you could notice where the active brood nest is located that would be of interest.
> Without influencing your inspection or observations, I've found the central broodnest ("active") to relocate lower in the hive shortly after placing the medium containing honey under the active brood box in the early fall than they were previously.


If I'm understanding this It seems that proper timing (Fall with lots of flying time remaining) would be the most critical factor when using this manipulation. Very intriguing, and something we may include in our yard next year. 

Thanks for this topic, maybe a new thread is in the future?


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

clyderoad said:


> If you could notice where the active brood nest is located that would be of interest.
> Without influencing your inspection or observations, I've found the central broodnest ("active") to relocate lower in the hive shortly after placing the medium containing honey under the active brood box in the early fall than they were previously.


well Clyderoad, as the honey is moved up it adds to the band already there and somewhat pushes the bees down.
AND prior there is only so low they can go as the BB is there, with the additional space, they CAN go lower. the nice thing IMO is the frame boundary is there which makes a nice east west causeway. next one is at the top cover.
you can also place a deep with medium frames, under, also adding a "empty" space under the cluster, and raising the cluster a bit more from the entrance. I do this often. or an empty super and then one with frames. IMO some air under is ok.

GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

drummerboy said:


> If I'm understanding this It seems that proper timing (Fall with lots of flying time remaining) would be the most critical factor when using this manipulation. Very intriguing, and something we may include in our yard next year.
> 
> Thanks for this topic, maybe a new thread is in the future?


I find putting a medium box with either drawn or undrawn foundation underneath when pulling the supers off a single deep colony really helps to eliminate the overflow condition. Otherwise the bees that have been living up in the 3 or so honey supers will not all fit inside the single deep. 

The wintering advantage of the space underneath the main brood area has been mentioned quite a few times. I think it is a bit more relaxed mangement compared to wintering in strictly a single deep configuration.

I had not thought of leaving in the frame feeder year around. I know with the Dadant depth frames in my area anyways, the queen does not seem need the whole ten frames to maintain her laying capability so that is certainly food for thought.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> If you could notice where the active brood nest is located that would be of interest.
> Without influencing your inspection or observations, I've found the central broodnest ("active") to relocate lower in the hive shortly after placing the medium containing honey under the active brood box in the early fall than they were previously.


One colony is in a double deep (DBL) the other in a single. The brood nests in both are high in the boxes with the dbl being slightly lower. Interestingly, both were to the sides of the boxes, not center, but sunny side.

The honey has not been moved as both are still well provisioned. I know there were some open cells when I put them on, now everything is capped. Maybe, when they begin brooding this spring they will move it up. My plan was to return all my hives to DBLs this next season so at that time I will move the supers back to the top, timing wii be left to the bees. I will try to remember to note (guess) if they have moved the honey. These variations are probably because of my southern location and thus far mild winter. I guess I could check monthly, weather permitting.

I have three colonies with fairly large amounts of capped brood and quite a few with small amounts. This is a month earlier than usual.

Alex

Edit; Another possibility is rather than capping the open cells in the super under the brood box they may have left the capped honey and only moved the open cells of nectar.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Beehives (and everything they contain, including excluders) exist for beekeepers. The bees will, with enthusiasm, build combs in any sort of enclosed box or hollow, including hollow trees.

Things like movable frames, removable top covers, etc. are used because they make life easier for beekeepers.

It is true that beekeepers do much of what they do to promote the welfare of bees, either from a natural affection for the bees, or from a recognition that it is in their own interest.

Questions like "Are Queen Excluders Really Necessary" will be answered differently by different beekeepers based on their own reasons for keeping bees, experience, etc.

It is clear that Queen Excluders are not really necessary. Some beekeepers find them very useful because they allow them to keep bees in a way that is satisfactory for their needs.
Other beekeepers find them unnecessary or contrary to their philosophy of beekeeping.

Discussions like this are very helpful, because they give us all an opportunity to hear the different ways people keep bees. We all learn things. 

Some of the practices we defend most reflexively we have adopted with the least amount of thought. I never gave much thought to operating without a queen excluder. I suppose I should think about that.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

AHudd said:


> One colony is in a double deep (DBL) the other in a single. The brood nests in both are high in the boxes with the dbl being slightly lower. Interestingly, both were to the sides of the boxes, not center, but sunny side.
> 
> The honey has not been moved as both are still well provisioned. I know there were some open cells when I put them on, now everything is capped. Maybe, when they begin brooding this spring they will move it up. My plan was to return all my hives to DBLs this next season so at that time I will move the supers back to the top, timing wii be left to the bees. I will try to remember to note (guess) if they have moved the honey. These variations are probably because of my southern location and thus far mild winter. I guess I could check monthly, weather permitting.
> 
> ...


Your conditions are very different from the conditions I experience in late December!
My contribution will have to be in generalities and not geared toward the "season".
I'm thinking that since the colonies were well provisioned there is no need for honey to be moved about, they have excess where they want it. For now anyway.
A trick I sometimes use (a la Doolittle) to get honey or nectar moved by the bees in warm conditions is to take a fork and uncap the honey frames so the bees are more or less forced to deal with it. Best done near sunset to avoid attention from neighboring bees, and I've found by morning the job is pretty much complete in a populous hive. (With your temperatures (I looked for your county) I wonder if they might just cap it again?)
Any pollen or nectar coming in there yet?
I realize this winter is abnormally warm in your parts but is it possible you'll experience some cold winter weather that may cause the bees to "reset", it sounds as if they are already behaving as if spring has sprung? Are you seeing orientation flights of any size yet?

It would be late March or early April before my bees here would be so far along, and that if the weather cooperates. Even later for my apiary in a more northern non coastal location with more continental weather conditions=colder for longer.
Thanks.

edit: added a la doolittle


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> Your conditions are very different from the conditions I experience in late December!
> My contribution will have to be in generalities and not geared toward the "season".


It's supposed to be cold here also, last year we had sub zero temps in early Feb.



clyderoad said:


> I'm thinking that since the colonies were well provisioned there is no need for honey to be moved about, they have excess where they want it. For now anyway.


I think you are right, I was worried about them running low on stores so I fed them quite a bit four to six weeks ago. Edit; There were six I did not feed which I think are the ones with capped brood. They were very strong late in the fall.




clyderoad said:


> Any pollen or nectar coming in there yet?


We get some Willow and Maple in late Feb. and the Red Buds can bloom in March, but they often get frost bite.



clyderoad said:


> I realize this winter is abnormally warm in your parts but is it possible you'll experience some cold winter weather that may cause the bees to "reset", it sounds as if they are already behaving as if spring has sprung? Are you seeing orientation flights of any size yet?


I have seen a few small flights, but I may have missed some as I haven't been paying that much attention as it is "too early".



clyderoad said:


> It would be late March or early April before my bees here would be so far along, and that if the weather cooperates. Even later for my apiary in a more northern non coastal location with more continental weather conditions=colder for longer.


My bees begin swarm prep in the middle of March and are hitting the trees by April 1st if no action is taken. They may be trying to swarm in January this year if it doesn't get cold soon. I better not feed them again. LOL

Alex


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

AHudd said:


> They may be trying to swarm in January this year if it doesn't get cold soon. I better not feed them again. LOL



Maybe time to clean up some equipment just in case you have to do some early vertical splits like Vance G describes?

Lots of guys here have paid good money to move thousands of colonies late this past fall praying for conditions just like that after the last year many of them have had!

Sounds like you're in pretty good shape, good for you.


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## Gypsi (Mar 27, 2011)

I have one super queen and I gave up and gave her 2 deeps to have her way with, but their production is phenomenal, just a big swarm that came in a couple of years ago, and if they popped a swarm in 2021 I didn't see it. I didn't have to feed, they gave me a full Illinois super of honey - I've set that super to 9 frames because the frames are so fat, she minds where she lays and I can only see a queen excluder as interference. She made it obvious that she needed more room last year by having a frame of brood in the middle on top and I just gave her room....


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