> One thing I did notice was that hives with excluders were much slower to
> start using supers and preferred to plug up the brood nest, but once
> they got in the mood to store honey in the supers, they quickly moved up
> the honey and caught up to their non excluder counter parts.

How many brood chambers were under the excluders in this test?

Excluders work best over _single brood_ chambers and require careful and 
conscious management to work consistently above doubles.  They often 
fail over triple brood chambers.

A single can easily provide sufficient space for even the most prolific 
queen if they are set up with ten frame spacing and use frames that do 
not have excessively wide wood and which have cells in the 5.0 to 5.3 mm 
range.

This has been discussed here previously with the supporting math and 
documented experience.  Wider spacing, wider wood and larger cells can 
reduce the number of cells in a brood chamber significantly.

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