Queen Excluder Right way / Wrong way

[Stinger]

Hello all,
I recently captured a swarm and placed it into a couple of medium supers to hold it until I could come up with some brood boxes.  I got the brood boxes shortly after my capture and placed them under the mediums and removed the medium on top making sure that there were no bees in it (one day after capturing the swarm).  At that time I did not have a queen excluder so I ordered one.  The excluder was back ordered so it took about 2 and a half weeks to deliver.  Once I had the new excluder I went back to the hive, removed and inspected the frames in the medium super.  Everything looked good, nice sealed brood, eggs, larva developing, comb drawing, bee bread and honey being stored.  I then removed all the bees from the frames and set them aside, pushed the bees remaing in the empty super down with a little smoke.  I then removed the empty super and placed the excluder on top of the brood boxes, replaced the super and the frames.  When installing the excluder I notoced it was stamped "this side up" on one side.  No problem, I can figure out what to do here.  Then I started thinking about my other colony, last year they produced no (zero) extra honey in the two mediums I had in place from mid May to September.  Could it be the way the excluder is installed is a problem?  It does not make sense to me because if it were one way only, everybody would end up on one side and not be able to get back.  Can anyone offer any good reason why an excluder should be installled in a particular orientation?

[Archie]

Hello Stinger,

I have always used plastic queen excluders.  No up or down, just a flat piece of plastic excluder.  I put the excluder cross ways on the hive and centered.  there is about 1.5 inches sticking out on each side of the brood box.  I do this so the bees can go up the front or back of the brood box and not have to try to get thru the small openings on the excluder.  The queen will not go to the ends of the frames and therefore will not go up into the next supper.  This has worked very well for me for the last two years.

Give it a try and see if it works for you.

Archie