no to queen excluders????????????

[Shawn]

I have four hives, four queen excluders, and have never used the excluders once. I have not yet had the problem of the queen laying in the supers until I rearranged the hive configuration  Now Im just working on getting the queen out of the one super. Anyway, another beek here has excluders on all his hives,32 hives, and I can see the difference between my supers and his. He has a lot less comb in his supers.

[harvey]

I am now up to seven hives, one queen excluder,  Discovered last year how to use the Queen excluder correctly and Don't understand why more people don't use them.. Of course I purchased a nice metal excluder,  I am sure a plastic one would not work at all.  The correct method I have discovered is to lightly spray the excluder with pam cooking oil,  then after the smoker is already at temperature you place the excluder on top and put the marinated salmon on top of that.  drizzle with honey and then brown sugar.  Smoke for about three hours at a low temp.  Fish come right off the excluder very nice and nothing sticks to it!!!   Using the excluder I place the lid on top of that ,  It seems to help regulate the temp of the smoker so as not to get too hot.  I like to smoke with charcoal and temp control is more dificult.  I like my Queen Excluder!    Never tried it on one of the hives though?

[annette]

Harvey that is hysterical

[Scadsobees]

They're one of those things that needs to be used right.  Just like entrance feeders.

Never use a QE with foundation above.
Don't use a QE if you have a super of capped honey above the brood.

DO use a QE if you have a box of comb (that is drawn out ) that you don't want brood in.

Once the queen is laying in a box it is hard to keep her out as the brood is hatching.  If you want to swap out a box and it has brood in it, you'll need the excluder.  Example, sold a hive to a friend and I want to keep the equipment.  So we're trying to get the queen to stop laying in my boxes and build up his.  Once his frames are getting drawn out, we put the QE on so she only lays in his boxes.

Another example is a  couple of supers that the bees drew out with all large storage/drone cell.  The queen will go up and cross 3 boxes of capped honey in the supers to lay drone comb way up there.  Grr....that isn't supposed to happen....

Sometimes when retreiving swarms, people will use a QE on the bottom over the entrance so that the swarm doesn't leave-if queenie can't get out the rest will stay.

[doak]

( First, Last and Foremost) Try things that are suggested. Then go with what works best for you.
There will be some who disagree with me but most dos and don't s  as for as Beekeeping are not written in stone.

Things might be different with the excluder if they were made in different sizes like the foundation is.
I have heard nothing about smaller bees doing better with the excluder than larger bees.
Nothing mysterious about this notion. (Does any one else have larger and smaller bees?).
Saying, I think the excluder was made based on the smaller bee sizes. What you think?

I found out if you take a plastic excluder and trim enough off to leave the space between frames 9 and 10
and 1 and 2 open, same space in front and rear. This also, "works for me".

The outer frames and ends of all are seldom filled with brood. Queen stays more to center.
 :)doak

[wd]

Kind of leaves one wondering why they were invented at all with so many that dislike using them.

[kathyp]

they have their uses but there are tricks to getting them to work. most people will get better results in backyard beekeeping without them, especially if you are just starting out. no harm in experimenting in their use and some hives do better with them than others.  i just find them one more piece of equipment that i have to mess with.  i use them for swarms when i remember, and i use them for on occasion for keeping the queen in one box or another when i need to move things around.