>What's your opinion? Last year on the advice of a friend with many years >of experience, I supered over my double-deep brood nests without excluders. >.... Hello Joel: In my opinion the use of queen excluders is a matter of beekeepers choice and whatever fits into your management system. You say that you have a buckwheat honey flow. Unless you are rigorously separating it from your other honey it is going to darken your honey. We had a letter to the list not too long ago from New Zealand, I believe, saying that extracting honey from combs that had brood in them at some time would darken the honey. It probably wouldn't make much difference if your honey had some buckwheat in it, and it doesn't seem to make any difference to my market (we also have some buckwheat grown here). I use the OAC bee escape board for clearing bees from my honey supers. I find that if there is brood in the third box (or a queen!!), it is quite obvious because the bees will not clear. I just switch the brood frames with some outside honey frames from below and put the escape board back on. But I only have a couple hundred hives and a big commercial beekeeper might find the extra labour unacceptable. I know people who overwinter in one deep box, and I think that must be impossible without using an excluder. Have a nice day Stan