I do not use excluders except to combine hives or confine queens.
My hives are all medium deep supers and have 6, yes 6, brood boxes currently and 2 honey supers. Large hives, they will now back fill two supers, making 4 to harvest, between now and labor day while also filling in much of the remaining four medium brood boxes I leave for winter. Only four supers per hive this year due to splits earlier.
I've found that the more bees you have per hive the more honey they produce, of course abundant pastures helps.