Queen Excluder???

[jig4bass]

Hey I'm looking for any advice on weather to use a queen excluder or not, so far I've read a lot on them and have convinced myself( almost ) to not use an excluder. What is everyone's opinion on them and if I go without what is the best way to limit brood in the honey supers? I am currently using two deep brood box's, thanks in advance

[Imker Ingo]

I have only used one once to make a split. I am not beekeeping for honey. It depends how you want to keep bees.

[jig4bass]

yeah I'm just mostly looking for honey production, but I can see how the excluder could be a restriction to the bees and cause swarming in some instances, on the other hand no brood in honey supers and easier to locate the queen, I would like to go without one but don't want a lot of brood in supers either.

[Michael Bush]

Hopkins on queen excluders:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm#excluders

[jig4bass]

Thanks Michael Bush that's a good article, I take it you don't use excluders, how much brood do you usually see in your supers without excluders?

[COAL REAPER]

on my two-deep hives i will use a shallow as the first honey super. they usually dont like to lay that one up.
look up george imirie if you want to confuse yourself more. he strongly advocated queen excluders. he emphasizes that you must use drawn comb in the honey supers and 'bait' them through the queen excluder by letting queen lay in one of them before adding the excluder.
if you use all mediums you can just cull out the frames containing brood and leave them in the hive.

[lharder]

I use them for raising queens, or stealing brood (shake bees off brood, then put above an excluder and let bees repopulate it.) I use snelgrove boards to raise some queens. Even if I take all the queen cells that are raised, I'll leave an excluder on for a while just in case I missed one. My form of risk avoidance.

I have some 2 queen systems in my home yard that uses them as well.

[Michael Bush]

>Thanks Michael Bush that's a good article, I take it you don't use excluders, how much brood do you usually see in your supers without excluders?

All my boxes are the same size. It is impossible for the queen to lay in a super. If she lays in it, it is a brood box. If it's full of honey, it's a super. Do I have problems of brood in my honey? No.