Today I sorted out the queen excluder issues in Hive D. It wasn't pretty.
I have made mistakes. A surprising proportion have been to do with the use of queen excluders. This time I had left the excluder out and found brood in the super above the capacious brood box.
A week ago I moved the Queen excluder in Hive D. Yesterday I had a look inside. The Queen appears to be in the lower box now. The sealed brood, including Drone brood has mostly hatched out. Some Drones were milling about above the excluder. Drones are too big to fit through an excluder so they were trapped.
I moved the queen excluded in Hive D yesterday. It is now between the brood box and the supers, where it ought to be.
I moved the frames from the super to a fresh super box, shaking each a little in the hope of moving the queen down. She leaves behind plenty of brood on the super frames, including Drone.
Drone can't fit between the bars of a queen excluder so I'm going to have to release them at some point. I'm not sure how to do that...
The bees will ignore empty frames which are above an excluder if there is no comb in them. I put a super on Hive D earlier this year but then took the excluder away then the bees weren't using the super. Now they are using it - for brood rearing. This is inconvenient because I hoped to take honey from it.
I have left the excluder out of a hive before with same result. The Queen will lay where the temperature is optimal. When the outside weather is cooler this will be at the top of the hive. It may be lower in the height of summer but I haven't observed this.