Josh writes:
  "One difference is that we are using a queen excluder on the Italian 
hive, again just as an experiment."

  Josh, 
   There's lots of stuff on this in the archives.  I have had mixed results 
using queen excluders.  This spring when I went to put supers on I left the 
excluders off to get the bees to start working up there.  I did this to 
three fairly strong Italian hives and one strong Carniolan hive.  After 
they had started occupying the supers, I made sure the queens weren't in 
them and inserted the queen excluders.  About a week and a half later I 
looked into the hives.  The bees had pretty much abandoned the supers and 
the brood chambers were full of swarm cells.  I should mention that I had 
noticed earlier that workers were struggling to get through the bars of the 
excluder. 
   I have a feeling the QE's had something to do with encouraging the swarm 
response or at least in negating the benefit of adding the supers.  I can't 
answer the question about old brood comb discouraging the storing of honey, 
but right now I'm feeling pretty negative about queen excluders.

Steve Noble

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