Robert said:
I don't like excluders, since bees don't seem to like going through them,
and I find they delay the occupation of the supers.

Bees need a reason to enter supers through excluders.

Open the window to your extracting room and place a queen excluder in its
place and then tell me bees do not like to go through excluders.We extract
honey all summer long and thousands of bees are trying to get in the
building when the *honey flow* is not on. The bees will enter through any
opening they can get their head through.

I have to chuckle when I visit a beekeepers extracting room and see bees
entering around a door then loading up with honey and then exiting through
the exit to the outside provided by the beekeeper.

Each bee which returns to the hive with a successful rob of honey from your
honey house will do a dance and then at least 10 will be back to rob. Those
10 will return and the robbing will increase.

My solution:

I trap bees trying to leave my processing area on a large screen. Then about
dark I release the bees to either fly home or join one of the two queenright
hives outside the door. When the hives get  packed with bees I move to a
outyard and place another  nuc in a hive in its place.


In the U.S. when you use two Langstroth deeps for brood chambers and  9-10
frames are empty between the two boxes when the honey flow starts you are
not going to see bees going through the excluder into the honey supers with
nectar until the bees get  the amount they need put away below the excluder.
Using an Imirie shim or another method for an entrance above the excluder,
raising  up the top a bee space, using wet supers, using a frame of unsealed
nectar as bait or moving up a frame of brood will work many times to get the
bees to start in supers during the early part of the honey flow  even when
room below the excluder for nectar storage is available.
Sincerely,
Bob Harrison

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