Greetings
I wanted to say I had such an enjoyable time with the Catskill Mountain
Beekeepers Club on Aug 14th. I am afraid not too of many them read this, but
thanks anyway. 

The subject of queen excluders came up and I expressed the opinion that "one
half of the room uses them and the other half doesn't, and they'll never
agree on it".

Then, a nice lady asked me point blank "what would you do?" I am afraid I
dodged that bullet. I suppose the answer is neither, because I don't own
bees at present (NY State Apiary Inspectors are not allowed to own bees).

The real answer is: it depends. It depends on what you like. It also depends
on how you take want to take your honey off. I used to use "Bee Go" and with
fume boards, queen excluders are not necessary and probably get in the way.

I know one beekeeper that uses bee escape boards extensively and they won't
really work if there's brood in the honey. And you can easily trap a queen
up. If you use a blower, you stand the chance of blowing the queen, if she's
in the honey supers.

Without queen excluders and especially if you use all the same size frame,
you can easily put the brood frames down when you take off the honey, either
with fumes or by (ugh) brushing and shaking. If you get a little brood back
to the honey house, you can just put it into hives you have there for this
purpose.

I like the idea of a one story brood nest enforced by a queen excluder. It
makes a very efficient and well organized hive. However, those years of
running bees without excluders probably accounts for the lingering notion
that you may get a better hive and more honey by not restricting the colony
in any way.

A third way is the use a deep or two and then all shallows, with no
excluder. The larger brood combs seem to hold the queen in the brood nest;
the smaller frames seem less inviting to her and she is not apt to wander up
very often. 

Pete

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