AD>From: Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 15:40:38 -0600
>Subject: Tiny Excluders
>Organization: The Beekeepers
AD>I wonder how many on the list have tried the new concept in queen
>excluders -- the excluders that only cover the centre part of the
>upper brood chamber?
AD>Several concepts are being used, and I have no personal experience
>with any.
AD>Any observations and/or anecdotes would be appreciated.
Hi Allen, hope your long winter is over and the bees are busy,,,!
Have not heard a thing on any new queen excluders, but do know the first
excluders in use here were (late 1890's) a flat metal strip around the
bottom of the 2nd brood box that extended a inch or two. It did work OK
according to the last old bee man that used them, and the idea was the
queen passed upstairs using the outside combs or something. I believe
that they did work myself, but long ago gave up on honey excluders as in
this area we need the maximum brood production because our "flush"
season is really short. Bee's here with no excluders make at least one
more super of honey of Wild Buckwheat honey and brood is not a problem
in the honey supers if the flow is normal as the brood is all blocked
out in a few weeks and all we have to do is wait for a few days or so
for the sealed brood to hatch.
If you have any old time comb honey supers with the metal strips on the
bottom edges you will get the idea of what this old idea for excluding
queens looked like.
I am not anti-excluder and imported several thousand years ago from
OZ made of a good plastic that I used for years in the sage which can be
a "on and off" flow that the bees will use most of for brood and without
the excluders would be in some years a bust for honey, but would make
swarms that would overflow 5 full depth brood boxes.<G>
BTW: The best all around excluders I ever purchased came from Canada
and were flat wire I believe called Chrysler. They were over priced by
the time we got them here, but were the best and seldom did a queen get
up, in fact I don't remember ever having one up, and the help had to
work to mess them up they were so well built. Don't know what the
Canadians thought of them, but if it like most local produced bee
equipment made here, they would pay more to import something that was
not as good, as that has been my experience in the beekeeping world.
Beekeepers trip over rocks of gold to put there bees in someone else
desert pasture and do the same to locally manufactured bee equipment.
It always has amazed and amused me in one trip back east visiting all
the beekeepers from here to there the closer I got to Dadant's
manufacturing plant in Ill, the more horror stories I would hear about
Dadant's products.<G> The best all around plastic frames I ever found in
searching the whole world I found in Australia and I could find nothing
good said about them from the local beekeepers. They sure worked here
and bees would draw them out better then thin regular wax foundation as
the plastic had almost better thermal properties then the wax and a
lot better then the plastics used today in foundations and combs. We
could only believe that there was a chemical in the manufacturing process
that kept the bees off of it when used fresh from the molds and this
chemical was released over time as it was more then a years delay
between manufacture and our own use. I suspect that something like that
also was going on with some of Dadant's early production as the local
beekeepers close to their plant would have one of these frames hanging
up on the wall in the extracting room to show every beekeeper that came
by what junk Dadant's was putting out, and at the same time I was using
the same product by the ton in California without a problem in the
world.
ttul Andy-
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~ QMPro 1.53 ~ "Where there is honey, there are beekeepers"
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