I'm a new beekeeper. I have a new nuc and introduced them to their new home. Later should I put a queen excluder and then another super or 2 supers before putting the queen excluder? Any thoughts?
I only use queen excluders to keep a queen IN if I pick up a hot swarm or hot removal or on multiple box setups to help me locate the queen
Like most things beekeeping, you will find many different answers on this one. I use excluders because I am interested in honey production and don't want eggs in my supers. I know others who don't use them and still have no problem harvesting honey as the queens tend to work a compact area rather than laying eggs at random. For me it is a convenience to not have to worry about eggs in my honeycomb, but on the flip side, I probably run a higher risk of an queen running out of space in which to lay eggs, thus requiring more inspection.
You don't say where you are, but the small hive beetle can take advantage of extra "real estate" the bees have to patrol. I started out this spring determined to add a second deep below the queen excluder to all my hives. The nectar flow was going strong and the bees had everything full of brood and nectar. It took a couple weeks with one thing and another but i got them built and put on. Then I harvested some honey and put the extracted frames back on the hives for the bees to clean and perhaps refill. I didn't realize that I had increased the space on a few colonies that had swarmed? or were much weaker for some reason. I had a beetle invasion in those hives. I went from adding supers to taking them off in the space of a month!
