"john f. mesinger" wrote:

>         For thirty years of reading and listening to my mentors, I accepted
> as universal truths, what I have found exceptions to in the past two years.
>
> 2] Queen excluders [called honey excluders by some] prevent the queen from
> laying eggs in a super.
>         See 1b for the exception to that. My queen catcher has more narrow
> spaces than the queen excluders.
>

Well, well.  Maybe there may actually be an exception to this rule, but my bet
is that the excluder has been bent and a space or two has been widened.  I use
excluders on all my hives, between the brood chamber and the supers, and only
very occasionally do I have brood and queen in the supers.  When this happens
I look carefully at the excluder, and always find that I have inadvertently
bent it.  This is easy to do, because excluders are not fun to work with:
supers or brood chambers stick to them, as often do the bottom pieces of
frames.  Yet they really are the very best method to be sure of keeping the
queen from laying in your supers.
Now - are they honey excluders?  I run 2-queen units in three brood chambers,
and most of my colonies already have four full supers of honey and our main
honey flow has not yet started.  My best hive has 6 full supers.  If queen
excluders really exclude honey, I don't think I could keep up with their
production without them!

Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA