HI!

Obviously, one wants to handle excluders as little as possible. Even a
slight bend in the wires can render the device *worse than useless*.

I suppose a solar melter is the best plan, but for those of us with less
than enough sun, especially in winter, I invented an "electric solar
melter".

I took an empty deep super, nailed a piece of plywood on it, and mounted
four heat lamps. I put the waxy queen excluder on a drip board, and place
the heat box over it, with the lamps pointing down.

It takes a minute or two to completely clean the excluder. The wax drips
into the drip board, which has a hole in the rim to let the wax drip into
a bucket.

This year I improved it slightly by fastening the box to the drip board
with hinges, and I tilted it a little to keep the wax from pooling up. I
use this to clean 200 excluders each winter. It requires very little
attention.

I also wired in a wind-up timer on it so that if I forget about it, it
shuts itself off (instead of bursting into flames, which it could do).

pb

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