3/2/2023 0 Comments Keep it queen![]() ![]() For your own convenience, keep the excluder off the hive until you need it. And if the colony is new, the bees won’t be storing surplus honey very soon. “Should I put the queen excluder on before I release the queen?” There is no point in excluding the queen if she’s still in a cage. In any case, if you have an alternate entrance, the queen won’t be stopped if she wants to leave, so the excluders serve no purpose. But an arrangement like that would result in unnecessary congestion, especially during a nectar flow. 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. Also, if the queen dies or is superseded, the new queen needs to be able to mate. This won’t work because the drones need to be able to come and go. “My kit came with one queen excluder, but don’t I need two?” I’m not sure what the beekeeper is thinking here, but perhaps he wants to keep the queen in the brood box by using an excluder above and below the brood chamber. As I said earlier, if you don’t have honey supers in place, you can take off the excluder. Yes, I have found queens exploring the lid, but that is unusual and, in any case, she’s doing no harm. Is that right?” A queen excluder between the inner cover and the lid isn’t doing anything except keeping the queen out of the lid. “I put the queen excluder above the inner cover and then added the lid. Otherwise, it’s a great tool and something for your beekeeper’s bag of tricks. I consider this type of use to be questionable for someone who has never kept bees and doesn’t know what to look for. However, the excluder must be removed after a few days because the drones cannot come and go. 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. The reason for this is that sometimes a colony is uncomfortable in a new box and will abscond. 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. “Does the queen excluder go above the brood box or below it?” In nearly all circumstances, the queen excluder goes above the brood boxes. Let’s look at some of the questions I listed above: So before using an excluder, always make sure it is in good shape. 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. ![]() It can be a mistake to assume her location because queens have minds of their own and they don’t always play by the rules.Īnd before using any excluder, make sure it is properly made and not bent or warped. ![]() In addition, you should never put a queen excluder on a hive unless you know exactly where your queen is. If you are new, I recommend keeping the excluder with the honey supers until you need them. 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. The usual purpose of a queen excluder is to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers. If you are are getting bees for the first time, you can leave your queen excluder in the shipping box, at least for now. If you accidentally exclude your queen from a place she needs to be, you can doom your colony. 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. In your bee hive, a queen excluder prevents queens and drones from passing through, but it allows the workers to pass through. In a jail cell, people cannot pass between the bars, but small things like mice and rats can easily pass. Simply put, it’s like the bars on a jail cell: large things cannot fit through the openings, but small things can. In order to answer these questions, you need to think about what a queen excluder does.
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