This will likely result in your bees swarming more than usual and in turn this will impact how productive they are when storing food. Using a queen excluder limits the queen to a specific space when laying eggs. The fewer bees you have the less nectar will be collected so it is worth monitoring any changes when you choose to introduce a queen excluder in your hive. Some beekeepers have noticed that the queen will eventually find a way to get through the queen excluder.
If this does happen it can result in abandonment of the brood in the brood box below. This can be a significant setback to the hive. One of the most common questions about queen excluders is whether or not they are seasonal and if they can be used all year round despite changes in weather, climate etc. This is an important factor to take into account as over time you will come to learn that there are differences in beekeeping practices depending on your location.
For instance, European beekeepers have noticed that there is a longer dormant period that results in bees producing honey during the spring period whereas in Africa the different seasons are more subtle and vary. As such, it is common practice in areas within the Northern hemisphere to remove your queen excluder during the winter period when temperatures drop. This is an important step as it allows for the bees to cluster together and generate heat and warmth amongst themselves. Leaving in the queen excluder during the cold and harsh winter periods may result in the death of your queen as she will be unable to move around the hive with the cluster.
This practice differs in the Southern hemisphere, in places like Australia and Africa, where the removal of the queen excluder may not necessarily be a requirement, as winters there can be very mild. Given the contentious nature of the topics at hand, there are a lot of questions surrounding the use of queen excluders. The short answer is yes, you can use a queen excluder in your horizontal hive. Quite a number of beekeepers use Two-Queen Horizontal bee hives and when this is in place the two queens must be separated by way of a queen excluder.
This will still allow for workers from either colony to make their way to the supers. Generally speaking the queen excluder is placed above the brood box. In some instances a beekeeper may choose to place the queen excluder for a couple of days.
This is typically done when hiving a swarm or a package of bees in a new hive. Queen excluders often get the short end of the stick when it comes to beekeeping and they are often blamed when bees fail to draw on new frames placed above the excluder. In such an instance you must ensure there is enough nectar flow so that the bees can expand.
You can try placing a super on to a brood box that is teeming with bees and has had all its frames drawn out. If a drone is trapped above the excluder he will get stuck and die trying to get through.
Worker bee wings may be damaged when the travel repeatedly through the excluder. The brood nest may become honeybound. I like to rotate honeycombs up throughout the spring to make room for the bees to build new comb in the brood nest and to give the queen more space to lay her eggs. This makes management slightly more complicated, especially for new beekeepers. So does using a queen excluder result in more honey or less? Beekeepers like to argue about this, but could it be that both statements are true?
I am starting to believe that this really depends on circumstance. Perhaps it comes down to the preferences of your individual colonies. Therefore, I encourage you all to observe your bees, keep notes and make your decision based on what you see. For example, I have found that when I work with bees from my local queen breeder, the colonies will naturally keep smaller brood nests and build honey readily, but when I work with the wild-caught bees they will go overboard on brood production.
I now use queen excluders on my wild colonies, but not on the colonies with bred queens. I also watch the behavior of my wild colonies closely because some do make modest brood nests with more generous honey stores and are not in need of an excluder. On the colonies where I do use an excluder, I try to include an upper entrance above the excluder to save some bees from having to travel through the excluder so often.
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When you have an extra entrance above the excluder… how big should it be? Are there guard bees at both entrances?
Are robber bees an issue with an extra entrance? I usually do about a 1 inch hole and I leave a reducer on the lower entrance. There should be guards at both entrances. If your colony is weak, it can be an issue with robbers. Is that right? Should I put the queen excluder on before I release the queen? Can I use a queen excluder to prevent swarming? In order to answer these questions, you need to think about what a queen excluder does. In a jail cell, people cannot pass between the bars, but small things like mice and rats can easily pass.
Okay, bad example. In your bee hive, a queen excluder prevents queens and drones from passing through, but it allows the workers to pass through. I consider a queen excluder to be a more-or-less advanced piece of equipment because, unless you think about what you are doing, you can make a mistake. If you accidentally exclude your queen from a place she needs to be, you can doom your colony. If you are are getting bees for the first time, you can leave your queen excluder in the shipping box, at least for now.
The usual purpose of a queen excluder is to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers. Until your bees draw out most of the frames in the brood boxes, you have no use for honey supers and, therefore, no use for a queen excluder. If you are new, I recommend keeping the excluder with the honey supers until you need them. In addition, you should never put a queen excluder on a hive unless you know exactly where your queen is.
And before using any excluder, make sure it is properly made and not bent or warped. If any of the openings are too large the queen may be able to get through, or if they are too small the workers may be shut out. So before using an excluder, always make sure it is in good shape. Sometimes a beekeeper may place a queen excluder below the brood box for a few days, especially when hiving a swarm or a package of bees in a brand new hive.
The reason for this is that sometimes a colony is uncomfortable in a new box and will abscond. If you can hold the bees there for a few days until some comb is built and the queen starts to lay, the colony will usually stay put. However, the excluder must be removed after a few days because the drones cannot come and go.
Also, if the queen dies or is superseded, the new queen needs to be able to mate. I suppose you could keep excluders on the top and bottom if your bees had an alternative entrance, say a hole drilled in the brood box. But an arrangement like that would result in unnecessary congestion, especially during a nectar flow. For your own convenience, keep the excluder off the hive until you need it. You may be able to forestall swarming for a few days, but if the colony is determined to swarm, it will.
In any case, you still have the problem with drones. Like many issues in beekeeping, people tend to have strong feelings about queen excluders, either loving them or hating them. As a result they are filling up the deep brood frames with honey, capped and uncapped at present. I think I will move the excluder and see if that encourages them to start using the super frames. I will also remove some of the brood box frames with just honey on and replace with fresh ones.
How best to store those moved frames until needed at the end of the season? The safest way to store frames of honey for later is to wrap them in plastic, freeze overnight, take them out of the freezer without removing the plastic wrap, and store in a cool, dry place. Bees will move up when they are ready, but it is not unusual to have a first-year colony that never makes it up there. Not to worry. After the brood hatches do the bees then fill the comb with honey? The post suggests putting the queen excluder between the two brood boxes, with the queen in the lower brood box and open brood in the upper brood box.
This encourages workers to go through the excluder. The honey supers then go on top of the upper brood box. Almost every time.
There are plenty of other places for her to be laying in the boxes below. Any thoughts? Were they laying or just inspecting?
Seriously, it makes me wonder. I recently went looking for a queen when I was trying to show a guest what a queen looked like. I finally gave up, but when I picked up the lid to put it back on, there she was, just walking around. Call me crazy, but I think they get bored. Queen rarely lays past the honey belt. I always leave a super on to overwinter the bees, seems to work well for me.
Sounds right. I think queen excluders are over-rated, although I do use one to keep my dog out of the chicken yard. Works great. A tip I just learned at bee school: first let the workers draw out the comb in the honey super for about a week THEN put the queen excluder between the hive and the super.
Ok so Im sure you guys are super busy and may not have time to assist me with this, but I have no one else that I know of that I can ask bee questions too. Im a Georgia new beekeeper. So if you have time this is what I have….. So the queen cells built on the bottom of the frames I got rid of and the 2 in the center of the frame I left. They are capping honey in my shallow super in abundance…. Can you dignose my problem or give me any pointers or advice as to what I should do at this point, given the small amount of information I just give you???
From you supersedure cells one queen hatched and then she went to the other queen cell and killed her. The new queen will take a few days to mature, and then mating may take a few more days more if the weather is bad , and then a few more days to mature.
You would expect to see eggs within 2 to three weeks after she hatches. You will be lucky to spot a young queen until a week give or take after her mating flight. However, do the math. I use the excluder to prevent queens from absconding; however, feral queens find a way through the excluder. Can anyone help? I live just north of Sydney, Australia — near the coast and its pretty warm compared to you guys I think all year around.
We are into our first month of spring and the bees are really hopping to it Both my hives have 2 brood and one super, no excluder. I keep putting the queen box on the bottom and she very quickly moves up to the middle again as your opening post suggested she would.
My question: if I put a forth box on without an excluder will she still have a tendency to move to the box second from the top, or is there some bee mechanic at work that has her wanting to be one box up from the bottom rather than one down from the top? What the queen will do is a little hard to say. So will your queen move up?
Maybe yes, maybe no. The question you have to answer is how disruptive that would be to you, the beekeeper. I am having problems with queens not moving in lower supers if they are located in supers above the bottom super — they do not seem to desire to move down but move up — any ideas.
I assume you mean brood boxes here, and not honey supers. I find that the queen will move down into lower brood boxes as the summer progresses and especially once backfilling has begun and then into higher brood boxes in the winter. On the other hand, not all queens behave the same way. I put the middle brood box box on the bottom a few weeks ago, and a few undrawn foundation frames in the brood at that time and a couple of undrawn foundation frames in top honey box just to cycle out some plastic frames with wood ones I prefer.
My amazing queen has laid in the two fresh frames in the bottom, laid up into the middle box and then done a perfect laying pattern in one of the fresh frames in the honey super too — brand new eggs today. The higher up in the hive the warmer it gets, hot air rising and all that, so she has a tendency to move up to the warmer areas of the hive to lay her eggs, its a natural instinct.
The often unnoticed affect of moving brood up above the excluder is where there are no queen footprints, there shall be an emergency queen cell started. Welcome to two queen hive separated by an excluder. I recently started a new hive. The supplier was out of bottom brood boxes so he told me to just use 2 shallows on the bottom as my deep.
I have 3 other hives, one I started a few months ago which is doing great, this one I started on Mothers Day weekend, and the population is still very small.
Or am I being impatient? Upon inspections the queen is there with lots of larvae, nicely laid out brood frames with honey on top in an arch with brood in the center, but still the activity outside is minimal. My other hives look like grandcentral station about , and hardly no one going in or out of the new hive. I think that whatever you are seeing has nothing at all to do with the two shallows.
If everything is as you say with lots of larvae, a nice brood pattern, and plenty of honey, you will eventually have foragers. It takes 21 days for the very first eggs to hatch.
Eight 8 days ago I added a super above my two 2 deeps, the super consists of 10 frames with wax foundation. I included a queen excluder between the top deep and the super. After checking the super yesterday it was evident there were only a handful of bees in the super and essentially no comb has been drawn out.
Even though the top deep is flourishing and full of bees, they seem to have no desire to move through the wire grid of the excluder. My plan is to periodically inspect the super to assess the extent to which comb is being drawn and to keep an eye out for eggs as comb becomes established. Should I feed the colony with sugar syrup until the comb is drawn out? Some folks like to feed syrup until the comb is drawn, but you have to keep an eye out because they will definitely dry and cap the syrup, treating it just like nectar.
After the comb building starts you can add the excluder again, if you want. I ordered 19 hives this May, and 14 of them are thriving. They have filled up two deeps, so I added a super for those 14 using queen excluders for all of them. The bees have been very reluctant to cross the excluder, and many of the hives still have completely empty supers after more than two weeks of having the super.
They have resorted to swarming, and I have caught 2 swarms, and could not catch 3 others for various reasons. Do you think taking the excluder out may help them move up to the super?
Could taking it out prevent their swarming? I split most of these hives, taking two brood frames from the lower hive body of all of my hives, and a honey frame from the upper hive body.
I used these frames and introduced new queens that I purchased to make nucs. I did this because I want more hives, and wanted to prevent overcrowding. They swarmed anyway. I find my bees are always reluctant to cross them, but some beekeepers have no problem. Like most things in beekeeping, I think they are a give-and-take: you get something and you lose something. Taking them out may encourage the bees to move up and maybe not. Try it. The same holds for swarming because all bee colonies are slightly different.
But the decision to swarm is made weeks before it happens, so it may not be so closely related. If you are going to make splits to prevent swarming, you will do better by taking the original queen and putting her in the split.
Moving the old queen more closely resembles actual swarming. Removing just a few frames may buy you a couple days, if anything. Or are newborn queens small enough to get through an excluder? Aside from the ASPCA, someone must have thought of this by now… — To stop swarming by preventing the queen from leaving… right? I plan on taking my bee class at the end of this month, and put hives out in the spring. Queen excluders that fit on the front of the hive are often called swarm guards and they are sold commercially.
I know that Brushy Mountain Bee Farm carries one. The problem with them is that they can only be used for short periods of time. For example, if I think a colony is ready to swarm, I may add a swarm guard for the few minutes it takes me to accumulate the equipment I need to do a split or some other intervention. It buys me a little time.
You cannot leave them on for long periods. For one thing, the frustrated colony my eventually leave with a virgin queen instead of the old queen. And yes, virgins are more apt to get out. But worse, your drones cannot get in or out, and you soon have a build up of dead drones inside your hive, which is not a healthy situation.
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