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Author Topic: Remove Queen Excluder?  (Read 7834 times)

Offline cwoernle

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« on: October 23, 2004, 12:59:00 pm »
This winter I plan to keep a shallow super filled with honey over the single
deep hive body as extra food for the colony.  Should I take off the queen
excluder, or won't it matter?  If the workers will retrieve honey with the
queen excluder in place, I'd just as soon leave it on.  Thanks.  Charles

Offline golfpsycho

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2004, 01:19:46 pm »
I'm not familiar with your weather down there.  If the bees don't go to winter cluster, you might get away with it.   For most of us, leaving the excluder on is not the best way to go.  As the bees cluster and consume their stores, they move up in the hive.  The queen excluder will cause the queen to be left behind.  End result... no queen.

Offline beemaster

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« Reply #2 on: October 23, 2004, 02:06:55 pm »
I would remove the excluder if using THAT shallow for Wintering honey, you want the option of the queen "Placing" herself anywhere within the cluster as it slowly moves and devours the honey for warmth.

I've read and enjoy the image of the cluster moving like ball in a giant 3D pong game with one special rule: it can not cover the same area twice once the honey is removed. Imagine the cluster moving about eating and warming itself, as the cluster "through a process most resembling convection" moves from the inside out and outside in simultaniously. All the while, just as the bees move in and out of the cluster (each taking turns eating and warming the cluster like a blanket) it also moves about the 3D world of the available supers consuming all the honey it needs to survive.

By keeping the excluder in the hive, you have a heatsink issue where the excluder radiates the cold through the center of the cluster, making it nearly impossible to achieve and maintain a consistant thermal temp within the cluster. Think of the excluder (plastic or steel) as a huge area of exposed metal or plastic that radiates its coldness into the small area that the cluster wants to warm - The excluder could 1) increase the amount of honey required to warm the bees throughout the Winter months or 2) prevent them totally from moving toward the upper box completely, so the shallow you place there may not even get used.

Just imagine if check the bees in the Spring and the bees are all dead, meanwhile you have a full shallow of honey that was never touched. I'm not saying this happens, but the bees don't like excluders to start with, having it as a huge chilled barrier between them and the honey surely could complicate the matter.

Replacing the excluder come Spring is fine, but I believe it serves NO PURPOSE and even creates problems to the clusters Wintering process if it remains in the hive.

Hope that helps.
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Anonymous

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2004, 12:21:58 am »
Very good reasons to remove the excluder. Being an angineer myself, I love it when somebody uses logical reasoning to explain why something should, or should not be done.

Offline beemaster

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2004, 03:36:54 pm »
Thanks Carbide:

I work in a field where my decisions often result in the safe launch of Navy AirCraft from a land-based Carrier Platform - I'd like to think that most of my decision making has home theory behind ot :)

No one approaches the launch hook to setup for launch without my "All Ready" and the lives of the pilot (2 pilots in many cases) and about 30 flight crew members all hinge on my approval. I've had a 15 year carrier with a 100% safety record and I'm proud of that fact - more importantly though, no failures are acceptable and the Catapult Lauch SOP - Standard Operating Procedures are the Bible of our Flight testing, whether launching jets, dummie loads or just the hook itself down the carrier platform, nothing is acceptable in the failure department.

I tend to shy away from medical questions in the forum, only because I think there are many better qualified members who can offer greater responce to the questions, but general beekeeping is often a fun topic to tackle and I enjoyed the Excluder Question a lot.

NOW.... Side note about Bush - Kerry (as I have noticed from your signature. I do have concervative idealisms, but I'm also very open to any idea that make common sense. Kerry annoys me though, I don't like his attitudes, manorisms, attack and fear campaign and I don't like Edwards at all. In a PM I'll go into Edwards a bit more detailed.

The worse single issue that leaves Kerry in the dust is his wanting to keep and even expand Affirmative Action - this is NOT 1970, it didn't work then, it won't work now and all it does it flashback to racial intollerance where:

1) minorites are given jobs they are NOT best qualified for which creates a weaker work force (something the US cannot afford now or ever in a global market)

2) Minorities should be insulted to be thought of as incapable of getting jobs on their own merit - as if they are mentally imapred and incapable of competing on a one against one application.

3) Is unfair to the BEST QUALIFIED APPLICANT who would be an asset to the company mission, rather than a token minority which will do nothing but reduce the productivity of any workforce.

So if for no other reason, and believe me there are MANY OTHER ISSUES, I would not place a vote toward the Kerry - Edward team.

Lastly, I'm that pleased with Bush either, but sometimes you need to vote for the lesser of two evils RATHER THAN THE Evil of two lessers. Not even concidaring the cost of changinf horses in mid-stream and the effect on our stagnant ecomony at this point in time and during a war that ALL OF US have very mixed feelings about.

7 more days and we'll have done our part - I just hope that the glitches have been fixed which caused that embarrasment last election.

To keep it fair, I must say that I had voted for Al Gore in 2000 and I firmly believe he was ripped off from the Presidential Seat in the most botched vote tally process ever. I just felt that if the country made the RARE MISTAKE of trying to see a FATHER AND SON elected in their life-time (which is why I believe Bush got such a turn out in the first place) that it would haunt us with another war in Iraq, finishing Daddy's work after Daddy was too chicken to go against the UN's ruling of NOT removing Saddam in 1990. Today, we are paying for it in countless ways and we may never see a free Iraq which isn't policed by American Soldiers.

But the issues of past elections are NOT relative now, and the choice is between Bush and Kerry - I don't think Kerry/Edards will do anyting positive except to push stem-cell research (which ethically I can live with) in order to possibly make unpresidented changes in many illnesses that afflict the human body. My belief has ALWAYS BEEN that it is God's great intervention that allows man to evolve with technology which will eventually find the cures to all diseases - understanding and mapping DNA was a vital step forward and stem-cells seem to be the next link in the chain. I don't believe it is destroying viable life, no more than cracking an egg in the frying pan has deleted a chicken from the table 8 weeks later.
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Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.

Offline golfpsycho

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Remove Queen Excluder?
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2004, 04:00:50 pm »
er.... umm.... yeah.. pull that excluder outta there

 

anything