Queen Excluders: Yes or No? 🐝 A hot topic in beekeeping! They help keep brood out of your honey—but may slow down production. Learn when and how to use them wisely.
Most beekeeping books explain that swarm cells (queens being raised in preparation for half the bees and the old queen to swarm away) and supersedure cells (queens being raised to replace a failing queen) are easy to spot. Swarm cells...
Debating Queen Excluders: Pros: Prevent queens from laying in supers; separates brood from honey. Cons: Less honey in supers; slow nectar storage; poor for weak hives.
Finding a queen is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of beekeeping! You are literally trying to spot one bee amongst tens of thousands of other bees, all while they run around on a frame. While there is no easy answer, I do have a handful of tricks I use after finding thousands of queens over the past decade.