Another question. Me and my brother have one set of hives each. He checked his tonight and all ten frames on his two deep hives are full but nothing in his supers. He said that his queen excluder is so full of stuff that the bees don't want to push up through it - maybe 60 bees in his super and a ton just under the excluder. So he removed his excluder. Good idea??? Its 95 degrees out and my bees are bearding so I am waiting a few days to look at mine. Extraction is set for labor day but he insists he will have nothing to extract at this rate. Do I follow suit? Are the excluders preventing bees from reaching the super? Thanks in advance

He did the right thing. Bees are hesitant to cross barriers like an excluder without dang good reason. There are basically two methods to coerce them through an excluder. Force or temptation, force as in your brother's case is the hardest and risks swarming. Tempt them with brood/brood comb/sealed honey/unsealed/extracted in order of preference. Foundation/empty comb being least attractive can be sweetened with syrup if it's all you have.
I personally don't use excluders for this very reason, some of us call them honey excluders. They are useful for other operations though and every keeper should have them and be familiar with their use though.

BTW, once they are passing through and using the supers the excluder is fully accepted and no longer a barrier, as in your case.

I am not a big believer in queen excluders. I learned a long time ago and has been my experience that a queen will only lay so high. I have no trouble with queens laying in my supers and I run no excluders. I believe it will slow them down and wear them out running excluders. There are some variables here however. Do you have drawn comb or just foundation? If they have to draw comb it can take time and there has to be a good honey flow. Make sure to inspect other frames in the deeps and make sure they have honey. I have seen years where you think there should be honey but there is not. Weather and lots of variables here. I would also like to hear what others say about queen excludes but I would get them off if they look plugged. Good luck. Adam

count me as one who calls em honey excluders.
dang few times i use the ONE i have here

For me keeping an unbroken ceiling of capped honey above the brood nest is all the excluder I need. The only time the queen will cross that is if the brood nest is completely pollen/honey bound.
I have had queens chimney (laying up the two center frames of every box as she races to the top) on me without an excluder though. Almost always a case of new colony start up and giving her the option of to many boxes in the stack, basically operator error. In that case an excluder is useful to run her down and confine her. Better yet keep her in one box until she fills it before adding another.

Well, it looks like I'm going to take the contrary opinion here. I use excluders, particularly in the early part of the season. I detest brood in my supers. Brood stains the wax, makes the cells smaller, and most importantly, supers that contained brood are far more attractive to wax moths than supers without any sign of brood. This time of year it's less likely for a queen to go high in a hive laying eggs. So many times when supering up for the fall flow I'll omit them. You sometimes can contain a queen to the hive bodies below by the presence of a full super above the brood below. I say sometimes, because if the bees feel the need to expand the brood chamber, they'll simply move the honey out of the super and store elsewhere.

A couple of things about using excluders...I always use drawn comb in any supers above excluders. Bees will hesitate to draw out foundation above an excluder. I always check their progress ( or lack of) in working supers above excluders. If they seem hesitant, I'll put a bucket feeder with 2:1 syrup over the inner cover ( with an empty hive body and outer cover to shelter the bucket) . This is only to prime the pump....get it off after they begin to utilize the feeder for a day or two. Otherwise they're going to fill the super with syrup based honey as opposed to nectar sourced honey. Sometimes I'll put in a shim with an entrance above the excluder to make it easier for foragers to enter the super. Many times they'll still enter through the bottom board entrance. If all else fails,the excluder comes out.

I am going to take a hard look at my super tomorrow. If I do not see good activity I will yank the excluder. Thanks

When I ran excluders I shifted boxes to allow a gap for an upper entrance. Then small hive beetle showed up.
I'm having much better luck full sun and buttoned up tight with half entrances on the 38 side.

I only had bees for a few years and lost them to tracheal mites but a friend of mine, who just happened to have years of experience at bee keeping, taught me how to care for and manage my bees. He told me to never use a queen excluder but instead to use 7 11 foundation in my supers. It has an odd size and the queen won't lay eggs in it. I followed his instructions and it worked for me. https://www.kelleybees.com/foundation-for-medium-frames-d-mnw.html

Another option if your top 10 frames are full of honey is to harvest one or two of the top frames of honey and replace with clean or drawn/empty frames. Let them fill it up with honey again. Most extractors will extract the big frames just the same as the small super frames. Keeps it from getting honey bound as well.

Ok I opened my hive and below my cover - on top of super - there are plenty of bees, so mine must be coming through the super. I did not pull any frames but it is a solid mass of bees on top and in the super frames. Guess I will leave mine and compare to my brothers in a few weeks.