>>The old frames are much less prone to blow out in the extractor,
too. Of course, I understand that with the widespread use of miticides, many people want to segregate the brood combs from the honey supers.

I have no opinion either way about consuming honey from the broodnest.  [I've read about the honey from the broodnest being darker.]  But I don't like extracting deep frames from the broodnest for pratictical reasons (I don't use miticides that can end up in the wax or honey).  

My broodnests are in 3 deeps with ten frames each.  When these frames are filled with capped honey, they represent *thin* combs that are awkward and tougher to uncap with a cold knife.

I use mediums with 8 frames for my supers.  Now these make nice extra fat combs with very deep cells.  Uncapping these is a pleasure.  Also the cells are drawn out very deep - too deep for the queen's abdomen to reach down to the bottom to plant an egg.  There is very little incentive for the bees to empty these and shave them down to the laying depth.

And I put the supers on as soon as the colonies have established the honey dome in the 3rd deep of the broodnest.  I don't get brood in my supers.

I practice undersupering to encourage a quicker removal of nectar from the broodnest - key to preventing overcrowding swarming.  This gives the queen more room in the broodnest and less motivation to look for empty cells in the supers.

In this set-up there is no need for a queen excluder which would reduce the rate of nectar movement from the broodnest up into the supers which, in turn, would reduce nectar gathering in the field and encourage swarming.

I only use excluders now to prevent queens from killing each other when I put colonies on top of each other [to save on bottom boards, covers etc.] during my queen rearing season.  Most of the time they are in storage.

Waldemar

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