For Beeginners Only
 
Beeginning beekeepers need to know two essentials,
as far as I'm concerned.
 
Point One. The best and cheapest quick reference around, for
my money, is the late (+1986) W.T. Kelley's <How to Keep Bees
and Sell Honey,> 140 pages, profusely illustrated, softback,
available from the Walter T. Kelley Co., 3107 Elizabethtown
Road, Clarkson, KY 42726, $5.00 plus shipping.  There's even
a chapter on raising one's own queens!
 
Point Two.  Mouse excluders are a waste of time. In my 37
years of consecutive beekeeping, I have never used one.
The standard bottom board has two sides, a deep and a
shallow. I run the shallow side up year round.  If my little
finger can't fit into the opening, nor will a mouse.
Those who run the deep side up must use excluders to keep
the mice out: they have to buy them, install them in the fall
(sometime sealing the mouse in!) and then remove them in the
spring: a waste of time, money, energy.
 
John Iannuzzi
Publisher of the Truth
March 18, 1997 2105 <b-list>
 
email: <[log in to unmask]>
url: <http://www.xmetric.com/honey>
 
 
###john iannuzzi phd
   ###beekeeper 37 years
      ###14 colonies w/ paisano honeybees
         ###historic ellicott city md usa (10 mi W balto)
            ###guardian of "singing masons building roofs of gold"
               ###URL -  http://www.xmetric.com/honey
                  ###email: [log in to unmask] [3fe972200]