Queen Excluders On

Around here, beekeeping pretty much follows the holidays which means that the 4th of July is time for honey harvesting. Last year I learned that the bees don't like to pass through into a honey super to draw out comb if the excluder in place so I left the hive unrestricted and the bees have done a fine job drawing comb on those frames and filling it with honey.

Queen Excluder

A queen excluder is a frame with narrow openings which allow the worker bees to pass though but are too small for the queen, thus keeping her out of a part of the hive. Without an excluder in place, the queen could potentially lay in the honey supers, if she were so inclined, and no one likes to harvest honey with brood! So, at least 3 weeks before you intend to harvest, an excluder is installed so that an entire 21 day brood cycle can pass and any brood that may be in the honey supers will be out by harvest time.

One downfall to this is that, what I intended as 3 supers full of honey from the OV hive, the queen decided to utilize one of them as a brood box. That means less honey for us but I don't mind as I'd rather have a strong and viable hive than a huge honey harvest and the OV hive has been such a strong hive and good donor for my splits.

Sasha Brood

I haven't been into the Sasha hive since the queen was released so was happy to struggle with a heavy honey super when adding the excluder to this hive. This is going to be a really good hive now that the new Russian queen is here.