Queen found above excluder

[Erichalfbee]

I have a few points to add to this thread, the first and most important being that you should DEFINITELY not put the queen in the brood box with the QE between her and the supers with brood. We have done this twice in successive years (some people learn slowly), and both occasions we have lost the queen. The first time they swarmed, the second time the bees balled the queen and killed her (we actually saw this happen on inspection).

The reason is that, with the queen unable to walk on the comb and spread her pheromones, the bees build queen cells from the brood/eggs in the same way as if the queen was duff, then she leaves or they get rid. The queen MUST have access to the brood, or you'll lose her.

I don't quite understand why this happened to you but it is quite common to leave an excluder between two boxes of brood when uniting or to get the bees into one box. I shall be doing just that on my colonies on brood and a shallow.

 

[ches chesney]

Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom, Crateman.

Serious food for thought and careful consideration.

Ches

 

[richardbees]

Hello Crateman,

I agree with erica....the Q pheromone is spread throughout the colony by the workers - for who the QE is no barrier and i often leave brood isolated above the QE with a new Q below.

Maybe you had another issue that caused the Q balling - a new Q already there but not yet laying?

richard

 

[Goran]

Here we with langs always move some brood above qe ( even through two supers -same size as brood box). We never had problem with Q balling..

 

[AugustC]

Someone may have smoked the entrance and forced the queen up onto the excluder. Very easy for her to end up in super then.