Every time this subject comes up, I'm going to repeat my two experiences: First, I once placed a newly-bought queen in a hive below a queen excluder with empty, drawn extracting comb above. Later I found a small clump of sealed brood, about 1" D, on each side of the middle frame and it never happened again. Second, I once had a box of frames of foundation above an excluder and a queen cell developed on one frame without a single other drawn cell. When a room full of people avow they have never seen something, it means nothing. Imagine what they would have said when they first heard someone describe a giraffe. Dan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping. http://shopping.yahoo.com