Hi Donald and All:
 
>We use queen excluders and find it simplifies this operation immensely.
>You don't worry about blowing the queen away and you don't have brood in
>the honey supers.
 
I don't have queen excluders on and intend to blow the supers this year.  I
have no complaints with the triangle bee escape boards (they work great) but
I do have some with the tightness of my equipment and over the years the
bees have managed to reclaim quite a bit of their hoard by times.
 
Donald you mentioned that you used a bee blower in some years without queen
excluders.  Did you find that some queens were lost in the blowing?  I
wondered whether she might just fly back into the hive along with the other
bees?  Are there techniques to minimize the chances of loss?
 
Any replies will be appreciated,
Stan