So it does. My apologies, it appears my original comment was misplaced. My assumption (dangerous as they are) came from the queries on the forum looking for excluders of the correct size in addition to the amount of people on this forum not running excluders.
Is it safe to say that people are choosing not to use it when provided? Or there are a lot of people buying the super only? Interested to understand the motivations.
So then 3/8" isnât the size to go with, which isthe better unit when going for excluder purchase?
Frederick,
Can you tell me please, how this works when you want to extract from those frames, or do the bees only cap if there is no brood in the frame? 0bviously Iâm new to this art !!
I can answer that question, I hope you donât mind. You are kind of correct, the bees will cap the honey with wax caps. They will cap the brood with thin fiber type caps when the brood is ready to be capped. It doesnât take long to learn how to distinguish the difference between the two.
I think if youâre not going to use a QX, it would be highly recommended to remove & inspect the frames before harvesting from them.
If you crack the frames to harvest the honey without physically inspecting the frames, you will run the risk of getting squashed bee larvae mixed with the honey.
Also the quashed bee larvae/pupae will be a real magnet for SHB to lay eggs in once you realign the frames.
Thanks JeffH for that info.
When asking that question, I was thinking of my second hive which is not a flow hive, but rather a 10 frame Langstroth. Itâs one that had swarmed last September and is not strong, and consists of two boxes only. I inspected the top box yesterday and was surprised to find larvae in some frames, but only four frames with drawn comb. Itâs all happening very slowly in Southern Aus. this summer.
This was also a side topic of discussion at your beekeepers association meeting.
I personally see how high the queen is laying in the hive and have rarely observed egg laying above the bottom two boxes in any of my hives. As a âsafetyâ barrier, I may add another shallow honey super before topping off with a FlowSuper.
This gives me some advance warning, if I see brood migrating UP in the colony. It has not happened in any of my colonies, including three FlowSupers. If you observe feral colonies in building walls, or in trees when being cut down, the natural comb shows that even those unmanaged colonies keep their brood low in the comb structure and the uppermost comb is filled with honey stores. You can see, at times, a gradual upward migration with brood and the bottom box being left virtually empty with drawn brood comb. Some keepers rotate those bottom two boxes in spring, taking that bottom box and just swapping it with the next box up. This practice encourages the bees to continue to use the bottom two boxes as the nursery, leaving your excess honey supers clear.
I hope that helps?
I am happy to provide a counter anecdote that I have regularly seen the queen move up above two full depth 10 frame Langstroth boxes without excluders. I actually just had to move a queen down last week that continued to lay in one of the Ideal supers sitting above two full depth Langstroths. The QX was originally out for winter and I gave up waiting for her to move back down (there was still dense brood pattern in the bottom two supers below).
Yes you can monitor it and hope to act quickly before it happens, but it doesnât take much for it to happen, and in a Flow Frame this results in a pretty involved cleanup effort.
I agree with the shallow honey super between brood and Flow Super (and have started promoting this as an idea locally)⌠but I still run QXâs in this configuration.
Are you using foundation in this hive?
Whatâs your contention here? what is it about an excluder that you are suggesting impacts their productivity?
I just havenât seen this, and have run half my colonies without when I have been slow to replace after winter. My two most productive (ie. bee numbers and honey yield) hives are both running excluders. I say two as these are the only hives iâve pulled honey off this (fairly weak) season.
If there is genuine concern about them expending energy âpushing throughâ, an excluder with a top entrance will solve this for the field bees returning needing access to the super.
Contention? Itâs simply about direct observation of the honey bees (worker bees) when faced with the Queen Excluder Barrier. Iâm not alone in this knowledge based on observations. Iâve also shared a YouTube years ago showing that a large percentage of workers simply canât get through.
Field bees donât put the nectar in the cells, interior workers do that after transferring the resources from the field bees. Dr. Delaplane, Chief Entomologist at the University of Georgia, USA published papers on this very problem many years ago.
Queen Excludes are indeed effective in keeping the Queen where you want her, as well as preventing her from entering honey supers. However, because so many workers (hatched down in the brood frames) cannot penetrate the excluder, our honey super work force is diminished and productivity slowed.
So, Iâm not âsuggestingâ that they are impacted, it is indeed impacting activity within the hive, not just restricting the Queen. I was only sharing my personal experience and how I practice honey bee management. You have a very different experience and Iâm glad you are doing so well.
Iâm more than willing to risk that activity.
I was under the (possibly incorrect) impression the exchange to the house bee can occur in the super (or at the location of the cell used for storage). I canât find the referenced paper to confirm if this suggests the exchange is only occurring below the excluder/at the bottom of the hive but I also have nothing to prove the contrary. The benefit I see with field bees returning above the super/excluder (through top entrance) is the transfer to house bees can occur above the excluder without out either bee requiring traversal through the excluder (ie. without potential hindrance moving back/forward through it) .
Genuinely interested to see/read if this is documented.
Do you have the name of the paper? I have found a list of his published papers here:
http://caes2.caes.uga.edu/bees/personnel/delaplane.html
Do you have a link to the YouTube video? found it. It hasnât changed my view⌠but appreciate you posting it.
-edit-
I can see how my original comment is poorly worded as the field bees donât technically need access to the super for storage. Apologies.
I can understand beekeepers avoiding a QX with a traditional hive. However with a flow hive where lots of folks want to harvest the honey without first inspecting the frames, I think in those cases it would be essential to use a QX. Yeah, sometimes the queen can still lay up brood, especially drones in the lower portion of the upper frames.
I believe that field bees need to do the transfer in the brood area, not far from the entrance, they not only transfer honey, but pollen also. Itâs where all the communicating of locations takes place, itâs the central hub of a hive. I believe they need only one entrance, a lower entrance near the brood. One entrance to guard & one entrance from which to draw air from & exhale air out of.
Edit- Iâm of the belief that lots of beekeepers that require 2 supers for brood simply arenât maximizing the potential of each frame in the brood. Iâve seen lots of videos on Youtube where beekeepers do inspections with multiple supers for brood where the frames are not used to their maximum potential. This to me is a waste of energy & resources on the part of the beekeeper that could be better deployed more efficiently.
Ok so a qx below the shallow super beneath the Flow box? The shallow super would then need to be filled before the Flow super. Is the shallow super for winter stores? Harvesting?
I can understand when not using a qx in a Ff it acts as a buffer or measuring stick so to speak as @Frederick_J_Dunn says, although surely using a qx on a FH is a no brainer, but if the queen canât lay in it then whatâs the point?
Could you please explain?
To provide stores that are available even when the Flow super has been âtapped offâ. We are finding that a lot of Flow owners are essentially waiting until the end of season to turn the tap and leaving little for the bees.
Yes the ideal sits above the QX, and yes this delays the filling of the Flow frames and the intention is not to harvest it. The reason I suggest ideal to people is that people were already adding full depth supers to fulfil the âone for me, one for the beesâ idea, but a full depth takes a very long time to fill in Canberra, and in my experience you donât need that much (when combined with stores in the super) to get through a Canberra winter (although seasons are obviously varied!)
Another reason is that a lot of people are taking the Flow super off over winter because they donât want to remove the QX to let the queen + winter cluster move up into the Flow frames because of brood ending up in the Flow when the new season starts, this leaves nothing to cover winter. (removing QX to give access to the ideal when the Flow super is removed is done instead).
Concerns have also been raised by some local beekeepers that some local nectar is prone to candying over winter which is another reason people are pulling the Flow supers off over this period.
Lastly, Canberra seems to have sharp nectar peaks and troughs⌠we seem to rarely have the long runs of say QLD (where I have also run hives) so the honey is often drawn down in mid season when there is a nectar dearth. The Ideal box gives a nice âbufferâ of stores to smooth out this profile of nectar availability.
Iâm not saying itâs for everyone (or anyone!), but for the very specific conditions I am in Locally, I find it works well (apologies if I started rambling!)
Thanks, not rambling, it makes sense. So if the qx is left out from between the two boxes itâs then a brood box and the queen would likely lay in it but it would also allow for more food stores for a dearth so why restrict it to being used just as a super if itâs not harvested?
In my experience a queen will happily lay a full super + ideal, especially if they are only 8 frame boxes. If you allow the queen to lay into the ideal your only real result is a larger colony with more brood with a still limited store outside of the Flow super (the problem I feel is solved by having the ideal there).
Perhaps changing frame of mind to think of it as increasing the Flow super size rather than thinking of it as extending the brood chamber. The result is a Flow super that you are limited in how much you can take off. (ie. you can then no longer drain it empty so the bees are guaranteed stores will be available over winter).
Itâs not really any different to how I currently manage my other hives in Canberra, I always leave an ideal super for the bees⌠Probably also worth noting that I didnât do the same in QLD.
I guess my lingering question is if the field bees enter above the excluder, do they then need to go down to the brood chamber to make the exchange to the house bees? ie. Is it the proximity to the entrance or the fact that it is close to the brood that makes it the ideal âhand offâ location. This is where I was of the belief the exchange would happen in the super at the entrance (above the excluder) and the field bee wouldnât need to move down through the excluder if a top entrance was provided.
On an interesting side note, Warre was critical of framed hives / systems that allowed comb to age (darken substantially) in the brood chamber. He wrote that honey was deposited in the brood chamber during the day, and moved up at night and if this brood comb was old it would impact the quality of the honey as it was moved through these cells.
The way I see it is that the bees solely use the super for excess honey stores because we donât allow brood there using a qx. Without excess stores, as we know, they store honey around the outside around the brood nest so logically the nectar would be transferred in or around the brood nest probably near the entrance⌠Why would they transfer up in the super when they need to take it back down to the brood nest to feed their charges when required?
If you had an unlimited brood nest In a metre cube box do you think the bees would go to the top of the box to transfer the nectar?
Look at where pollen is deposited, so where is that transferred? Would a forager waste time and energy going to the top when it could be spending that time and energy doing what itâs job is?
The most efficient way to deposit the load would be near the entrance and let the house bees take it from there after all thatâs their job.
I may be wrong, I frequently am and Iâm not a bee.
And you think you ramble⌠
I am not suggesting that the field be go to the âtop of the cubeâ when entering at a lower/bottom entry, I am saying if the entry is at the top, and the honey store is also at the top (in the super the entrance provides direct access to), would the field bee need to travel down below the super to find a house bee for the exchange? Or can it be assumed a house bee would be waiting in the super at the top entrance for the exchange. (which may then take it down through the QX) ? This question stands if the nectar is destined for the brood chamber to feed brood_or_ if itâs going into the honey super. ie. Is the exchange happening in traditional hives because the entrance is in the brood nest, or because that is in the vicinity of the hive entrance.
I am specifically discussing top entrances above the excluder (ie. In the super) saving field bees time and removing the need for them to pass through a QX.
Iâm not expecting a definitive answer,. I think itâs an interesting question/point of discussion.