In this video, the beekeeper conducts a season-long experiment by removing the queen (honey) excluder from a single colony, allowing the queen unrestricted access to honey supers. Over the course of the season, the presenter documents the colony’s behavior, noting extensive brood migration (chimneying) into the supers, a dramatic increase in colony size, and a modest rise in honey stores. The queen lays eggs on nearly every frame, including those intended for honey, leading to a chaotic hive with brood interspersed throughout. The beekeeper records the development of brood patterns, the presence of swarm cells, and the distribution of honey versus brood across multiple boxes. By the end of the trial, the hive has produced several full supers of honey but also created significant management challenges: difficult honey extraction, increased risk of wax moth damage to brood-filled frames, and overall messiness. The final assessment concludes that the marginal gain in honey does not outweigh the complications, and the presenter recommits to using queen excluders in future hives. The video also includes a brief promotion for Buckfast queens from Black Mountain Honey.
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Queen excluders or honey excluders? In this video, we're going to find out. Now, I've had so many comments on the channel saying, why are you using a queen excluder? That's the last thing you want to do. This is a honey excluder. Take away the queen excluder and you'll get lots and lots of honey. We'll chuck away the queen excluder for the season and we will do one colony of bees with no queen excluder, as many supers as they like, and then we'll see how easy it is to extract at the end of the year. Lovely brood pattern. That is what we want to see. It's like each frame gets a little bit better. Can't find the queen, but I can see lots and lots of eggs. And this colony here is definitely ready a super. My rule for needing a super is that roughly 80% of the frames are covered by bees, and you can see that there. I would say that is 80% covered. This one here is good to go. So as simple as this, I'm taking 2 supers, no queen excluder, and we are just going to leave the bees to it. Normally when I put the supers on, I place a wire grid called a queen excluder over the brood box to stop the queen laying eggs in my supers where I actually want the bees to be storing honey. For this video, I'm not adding the queen excluder, and I'm just going directly on with the supers. First box is empty. Second box we've got here, you can see, so the bees are now up in the super and they are taking advantage of these new frames. Lots of nice honey in the super. That's right, isn't it? We want our honey upstairs in the super and we want our brood downstairs in the brood box. That is where we put the brood. Right, brilliant. They put the brood up in the super already. Taken them one week and they've wrecked my frames by putting brood up in the super. But that to me is an absolutely shocking start. Why do they do that? Why do they tunnel up and put all of the brood and then work it out? It really does frustrate me as a beekeeper, and this is why I use a queen excluder. I'll stack everything back up again. Let's fast forward a few weeks now and see what is going on with this colony. So this looks completely set up. Let me show you what these bees have done. So the bees have started to draw out that foundation going up in a tunnel. So we've got 1 frame drawn out on the top, 2 frames drawn out on the top, and then I've even got some bees on that frame there. But then everything else on that top one is completely empty. Just looking down to that next level now, we've got quite a bit of action down here actually. The outside frame's not yet been drawn, but that middle set of 6 looks pretty good. Bit of brace comb in the middle, but we can deal with that. Well, first thing I should say with these frames here is just look at the color of them. Spectacular golden colour. And the reason for that amazing colour there is the dandelion. But check that out. Beautiful colour, but it is full of brood. So, 1 frame full of brood, 2 frames full of brood, 3 frames full of brood, and our queen. What are you doing upstairs in the super? So we sell about 10,000 queens each year, and we produce well over 1,000 of these each year in our UK-mated apiaries. If you want top quality F1 Buckfast queens, go to blackmountainhoney.co.uk. Okay, but this video is all about this queen here and where she is going to choose to lay. And at the moment, she is choosing to lay in the brand new shallow super frame. So it's been a few weeks since we left this colony here with no queen excluder. There is a brood box, a super, a super, but no queen excluder that would normally live there. She has got free rein to go wherever she wants, and oh yeah, she is making the most of it. So Brood up in the supers, of course. Even on the frames where you think it's mostly honey, no, there's still loads of brood. Kind of get the picture, don't you? She just put brood pretty much on every frame. You can see why I'm not a fan of this system. But let's go further down because this frame is even more full of bees. Let's have a look on this frame what they've done. Again, huge amounts of brood. Look at this. This is not good. The queen is just laying wherever she wants to lay. But let's quickly take a look in the brood box because there's brood in the supers. What is in the brood box? Yeah, well, it is a Black Mountain Honey Queen and she is turbocharged, so there's just more brood. What an absolute mess. Queen excluder, honey excluder. I know which one I think it is and I know which one I want. This colony needs a queen excluder because it's just a complete and utter mess. The bees have run out of space, so we're going to give them another super and put everything back together again. No queen excluder for the entire season. Let's see what happens at the end. At the moment, it is a nightmare. Within 24 hours, they've already started to draw out all those frames. Pretty much 50% of the frames in the top box are now drawn out. But if I take this top box off, you will be quite amazed to see what we have got inside. That is a huge amount of bees. And that is not the only box. We've got 2 boxes of bees and the brood area as well. So full, completely full to the brim. So this is the brood box. So normally what you would expect to find in the brood nest is just the queen. Absolutely loads of brood and no space whatsoever. If I put a frame of foundation into a brood nest with the queen excluder on, within a day or two it would be drawn out. This colony here has had those outside frames of foundation on for about six weeks. Let's take a look at them. So I just put the super back on there. Let's take a look in there now and see what some of the frames are looking like. So if I start pulling out these frames, you can see what is going on here. We've got brood. We've got more brood. Lots of drone brood as well. We have got some honey. Okay, bit of honey there, that's good. And then a bit more honey on that side. And then could you make it up? No, we've got foundation on the sides as well. And it extends all the way to the top up here. So if I pull out this frame as well, brood again, and lots of brood. But then towards the outer side of the colony, if I pull out the frames, it's honey every time. So they're doing exactly what I predicted that they were gonna do. The bees are chimneying. They're starting in this middle bit and they're just working their way up with brood. Brood, using that chimney effect. And then on the outer edges, so up that side and down that side, that is where they're storing honey. And by not using a queen excluder, you give them the option of setting themselves up as they wish, which in my view is not the best thing to do, and it's definitely the worst for the beekeeper. So I'll tell you what's happened so far. We're 6 weeks in and the colony has just swarmed. They have produced an incredible amount of honey. We're at the back end of June now and the bees have swarmed and they've got 4 or 5 full supers of honey. And then there's a couple of supers that are either not used or only partially used. So pulling out the frames here is, it's a little bit crazy, I'm not gonna lie, because look what we've got here. We've got super frames with a lot of swarm cells. Look at that. So I'll just flash you through some of these frames and as suspected, outer frames, They're putting the stores. As we move towards the middle, we've got more brood. We've got loads of swarm cells here as well. Loads of frames of capped brood. Let's go down to the brood nest and see what they've done down there. So just frames of brood down here. A lot of it is empty because they have just swarmed. And then look at that. So this is the reason that I really, really do not like this system. Wait for my final thoughts. They won't be as harsh as you think they might be. But look at this. We are in like 12 weeks after putting the frames in, and I've got frames in the brood box that are still just foundation. They've not really touched them. So I'm going to start putting everything back together again and working all the way up to the top. So stores over on this side here. As we work into the middle, we've got brood again. Lots of swarm cells, lots of swarm cells, lots of brood. Right, so next one. This is the 4th box. What's going on here? Look at all this brood. We do have honey up here as well. So it seems that the honey is encroaching towards the center the further up we go in the beehive. And it's not until the 4th shallow or the 5th box that they've actually stopped putting any brood up here at all. So I struggled to peep over it. Now that whole box underneath was honey, and then this whole box here is honey as well. So queen excluders, honey excluders, what are my final thoughts? There is no doubt in my mind that by not having a queen excluder on this colony, I have ended up with a much, and I mean much bigger colony versus if I'd put a queen excluder in there. The queen has got unlimited space to go and lay. She's taken advantage of that and built a monster colony. Everything that you're seeing here is half of the colony. The other half is in the tree behind me and it is a very, very big swarm. So yes, the size of the colony has substantially increased versus using a queen excluder. Has it produced any more honey? I would say it probably has produced a little bit more honey as well. There's no testing involved there, but there is a huge amount of honey in these boxes. Here's the kicker though, and here's my final thought: is that additional honey worth the hassle that is created by letting the queen run wild like that? It makes extraction and harvesting so much more difficult, and it makes the management of your frames way more difficult than if they'd never seen any brood. Wax moth will now destroy these frames, but if I just kept them as honey supers, the wax moth would pretty much turn their nose up at them. They only want to go for the brood It's for that reason, and pretty much that reason only, that I will continue to use queen excluders in all of my beehives. I love trying out stuff like this though. If there's anything that you think that I could try out that you don't want to try out on your bees, stick it in the comments. And as always, the biggest compliment you can pay me is sharing this on social media.
