Not using queen excluder - didn't seem to work

[Elaine]

It depends on your definition of what you expected to happen without a QE. I don't use them and the system works well for me and the bees. They can move up and down the hive as they want to, and create the central nest area to the shape they want. They then surround that with pollen and honey. When I inspect, I leave the frames with brood and pollen, and take any outer frames of ripened honey. I just brush off the bees back into the hive, and replace the frame with ideally a frame I extracted the previous week. By doing this, my honey is different every week, depending on what has been in flower, and the bees are not having to draw new comb all the time. If you manage things differently, and want to be sure of being able to take a whole super, and be certain that there is no brood, then it isn't going to 'work' as the bees will want to direct the queen to lay in the part of the hive with optimum environmental conditions.