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