>What's your opinion?  Last year on the advice of a friend with many years
>of experience, I supered over my double-deep brood nests without excluders.
>....
Hello Joel:
        In my opinion the use of queen excluders is a matter of beekeepers
choice and whatever fits into your management system.  You say that you have
a buckwheat honey flow.  Unless you are rigorously separating it from your
other honey it is going to darken your honey.  We had a letter to the list
not too long ago from New Zealand, I believe, saying that extracting honey
from combs that had brood in them at some time would darken the honey.  It
probably wouldn't make much difference if your honey had some buckwheat in
it, and it doesn't seem to make any difference to my market (we also have
some buckwheat grown here).
 
        I use the OAC bee escape board for clearing bees from my honey
supers.  I find that if there is brood in the third box (or a queen!!), it
is quite obvious because the bees will not clear.  I just switch the brood
frames with some outside honey frames from below and put the escape board
back on.  But I only have a couple hundred hives and a big commercial
beekeeper  might find the extra labour unacceptable.  I know people who
overwinter in one deep box, and I think that must be impossible without
using an excluder.
Have a nice day        Stan