All
   >this does not mean that I do not believe the information that Jerry
has
   >posted just that I could not profitably run honey production
colonies
   >without excluders.

I am not really sure I agree with that assessment as a blanket
statement. So long as there is plenty of forage for your bees, the more
bees you have, the more honey you get. It is also true that a colony
that is very strong produces more honey than two colonies that add
together to equal strength.

If you keep bees in a ULBN arrangement or something similar, allowing
the bees to manage their own breeding capacity, you most often find that
your production levels increase a great deal.

As far as I know, and according to most commercial beekeepers that I
know. Queen excluders are these days most often use by hobbyists and
smaller operations. The largest operations avoid them as an added
expense and increase of labor.

Scot Mc Pherson
Linux From Scratch
http://linuxfromscratch.org/~scot/
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/OrganicBeekeepers/

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