REGARDING           Excluders, honey and wax moths
 
Tim Sterrett recently posted a reply to an earlier inquiry about queen
excluders.  I've written about this before, but since it deals with one of my
favorite myths in beekeeping, here goes again:
   The myth is that a queen excluder is a honey excluder.
 
I have tested this often over the years, having been an active beekeeper since
1978, with usually about 75 colonies.  In the earlier years I ran colonies
both with and without excluders.  Both groups had colonies that produced well
and poorly.  For the last dozen years, at least, I therefore regularly used
excluders on all my colonies.  I have often had seven supers crammed full of
honey.  At 40lbs/super, that's 280 lbs of honey on top of the excluder!
Usually there are at least four and up to six completely full supers on each.
How I could get more honey having removed the excluder is cause for wonder.
 
Now, having put that myth to rest, I'd like to give the reason that I do use
excluders - to save the honeycomb from wax moth damage.  Moths will not attack
clean, dry honeycomb in storage.  They feed on organic matter that may be
present in the combs, and do not utilize beeswax per se.  If the queen goes up
into the super to lay eggs, there will be brood remnants (such as cocoons)
remaining, even if she later goes down again.  There will be pollen pellets
stored in the bases of some of the cells.  And there may even be a few (or a
lot) of brood left in case the honey flow was not as good as anticipated.  All
this attracts wax moths, which will destroy the comb later when it is stored.
 
I don't like to store honey supers with paradiclorobenzene.  It gets into the
wax and I'm never sure that it ever completely leaves.  I don't want this in
my honey.  I also don't want to deal with organisms as disgusting as wax moths
and their leavings.  The very simplest way to protect your combs is to keep
them for honey only, using the excluder.
 
Ted Fischer