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]