To "queen exclude" or not

Queen excluders - AKA: honey excluders. As a "newbee" beekeeper, I bought into the queen excluder idea my first year. Well of course the thing that "NEVER HAPPENS" happened....my first year package bees swarmed. I thought I was keeping ahead of them - I felt they had plenty of space.....but apparently THEY THOUGHT this excluder was a ROOF overhead.

I don't use them anymore. Oh, but what about the queen laying eggs in your supers!??? It happens, but rarely and when it does it's a FEW. The queen doesn't like to travel over capped honey. This a simple check - make sure your frames in the top box, have honey on the tops (and the brood is below).

And so what??? if there are a couple of bees brought-up in the supers? by the time honey harvest rolls around - these bees will likely be hatched out....and the tendency of the workers is to keep that queen down in the deeps.

Of course this subject is a little different if we're talking about CUT COMB vs. extracted. The brood cells will be darkened and not real appealing to the consumer....

To me, the trade-off is a HANDFULL of "darkened/brood cells" or a hive BURSTING with workers and honey. (the excluder also slows the workers down in getting honey into the supers)

my opinion....Queen excluders = Honey excluders = Swarm inducers.