Queen excluders & lower entrance colonies

[omnimirage]

I've recently discovered this source:

http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/queen-excluder-or-honey-excluder/

And it's led me to wonder whether I should even use excluders. I have an apiary site, in scrub land Australia, with 6 well established, mostly strong hives. These hives have been neglected, and the comb inside is dark and foul. I don't wish the bees to lay brood in the comb I wish to use to extract honey, but I also don't want to reduce the efficiency of my hives.

Under these conditions, should I make the effort in installing queen excluders? If I wish to use queen excluders in the future, should I use hives that have upper entrances instead of lower?

[iddee]

Excluders are a beek's choice. To make comb honey, you practically have to have them. For extracted honey, I never use them.  The brood is always below the honey, so when there is brood in the super, the hive doesn't have a full super to spare.

If you decide to use an excluder, DO NOT put a super of foundation directly on top the excluder. Use drawn comb or put the foundation on minus the excluder. After it is accepted and they are working in it, then add the excluder.

[omnimirage]

Do I need upper entrance hives to use them? So the queen will generally lay in the lower part of the hive, and leave the top untouched if she doesn't need the space?

I didn't know that I needed to do that. Why must such be done?

[iddee]

I've never used upper entrances, so can't answer that. I don't have skunks in my area, either, so they wouldn't help in that way.

[Perry]

I have upper entrances year round. I use excluders when the queens move up into my honey supers. If I find them there (usually early in the spring, right after I put the supers on) I move them down into the brood chamber and then place an excluder in. Once you have an established honey barrier the excluder is often not needed.

[omnimirage]

Do you find they're benefits to using upper entrance hives? Why do you only use queen excluders during such a time, why not always?

What is this honey barrier? Seen the term used but not sure what it's referring to.

[Perry]

I feel that the upper entrance relieves a bit of congestion, but not a whole lot. I like them for ventilation purposes, and as an exit during the spring if the lower one is plugged with dead bees.
A honey barrier is essentially a layer of honey located right above the brood. Queens do not like traveling across capped honey and usually avoid doing so. If you can establish a layer of honey above the brood, the queen will seldom cross it to reach open comb. Please note the highlights, rules in beekeeping are basically "guidelines" and nothing regarding bees is written in stone.

[apisbees]

On some colonies putting a queen excluder on then supering with honey supers is like leaving the cover over the brood and placing the supers on top of the cover. you think you have just given them all this extra room but it is ignored by the bees because they are reluctant to travel through the excluder.  Once they get use to going up in to the super above the excluder then everything is fine. I bate my honey supers. I use deeps as supers also so i will pull frames with honey up into the honey super and place combs with empty cells for the queen to lay in in the brood chamber. This elevates brood box congestion giving the queen more space to lay, it puts honey in the 1st super so it will draw the bees through the excluder.

[efmesch]

I won't add anthing about the queen excluder, its' functions and success or lack of success in honey production, but as for an upper entrance, I have what for me is the ideal solution.

When a good flow is going on and crowding is a real concern, I make a temporary upper entrance by sliding the super above the excluder or above the brood nest, back about 1 to 1 1/2 cm.  This produces an entrance slit all the way across the front of the hive.  The entrance is from the front of the first super and not the back (because if the different thicknesses of the wood) and does not open the back of the hive.  As soon as conditions no longer show the extra entrance to be needed, slide the super back to its normal positioning and, "Walla", the extra entrance is gone.  Quickly enough the field bees once again get used to entering from the regular hive entrance.