RE:
>All of the discussion about cleaning excluders begs the real questions:
>Do excluders actually work as well as the proponents think -- in our research, we've seen a lot of queens slip through, whether metal or plastic.
>Are excluders good management  -- do they actually do more good than harm?
>How much is the use of excluders based on actual data -- or are they being used because that's the way things should be?
>Frankly, I've seen excluders cause tremendous disruption to colony dynamics - queens superceded, balled, aborted.  Brood ripped out, etc.  Comb torn down.  Resources moved about -- all during nectar flows.


Greetings!

I have kept bees for thirty years, sometimes a few at a time, sometimes hundreds of hives. I have managed hives without queen excluders and with them. Using either approach, you have to thoroughly understand the method, implement it correctly, and be willing to shift gears as needed!

The primary reason for using the queen excluder is to *organize the hive* into a brood area and a honey area. Of course, honey bees will normally do this on their own -- but the line is never as distinct as it is with the queen excluder in place. In my view, there is only one appropriate place for the excluder: *over the second story*. If you put it over the first, you'll cramp the queen. If you put if over the third, they will probably pack the second and third with honey, and neglect to go through the excluder.

With no excluder in place, one usually "top-supers", rather than put a new super under the older, because if you under-super with no queen excluder, you can pretty much bet the queen will fill the combs with eggs. Early in the season that would cause no particular harm, because eventually the brood hatches and the bees move the nest back down as the supers fill up. But if you want to keep the brood out of the supers, best to put empties on top -- the full supers act as a natural barrier to the queen. Further, top supering is much easier and will probably net you just as much honey, depending on flow conditions.

With the excluder in place, you can put the empty right over the excluder, and put fuller boxes on top. This is more work, but it may help to prevent the brood nest from getting honey-bound and it certainly is nice having the full supers on top of the partials, when you are using a fume board. It is much easier to handle the honey supers, when you know that the queen is *not* in them. There is virtually no danger of crushing the queen when checking or removing the honey. In fact, the honey comes off much easier when there is *no* brood up in the supers. (Yeah, I know, sometimes she gets through a bum excluder, but I find this is *very* rare, if you take care of your excluders)

Most problems arise from *lack of follow up*. If you use the excluder, you must make sure the bees are passing freely through it. If not, it may be best to remove it until the bees are well up into the supers. Then, the hive can be reorganized by physically moving the queen and brood down, inserting the excluder and moving full frames of honey out of the brood area into the supers (not possible if one uses deeps for brood but mediums or shallows for the supers). Another approach is to leave the excluders off for the first half of the season. Then, try to take as much honey off as possible and reduce the hives to two stories. Re-super, putting the excluder in the correct place. At this point the hives should be boiling with bees and the excluder should prove no hindrance.

So, to answer Jerry's specific objections, if a person is doing something because they think *they should*, that's obviously a mistake. You need to do what works best for you, via *trial and error*. If the excluder flat won't work for you, give it up and learn to manage the hives without it. If you want to use them, you have to learn to recognize the problems and fix them. A queen excluder most definitely can cause a "disruption to colony dynamics". Of course, if the queen excluder was *solely* to blame for this, it would be worse than useless. But it isn't. It can be used to great advantage, if you *thoroughly understand the method, implement it correctly, and be willing to shift gears as needed!*

pb

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