I just got through going through my hives. I had wood bound queen excluders on top of two of the hives. I was going to see if the queens would fill on up the lower mediums with brood...I guess I was using as a queen "includer". Anyhow, I had already read that beetles can get in the grooves that the wires are held in so I was on the look out. Yelp, there were some there...not overloaded, but more than I wanted there. The queen excluders are no longer on the hives now and I just spent about 30 minutes going around the edges of those excluders and stabbing the black slimers.
Those suckers were using those grooves like an interstate highway. The bees had been working on covering (not filling) the grooves with propolis. The shb could still travel *beneath* the layer of propolis that the bees had put in the grooves...in other words the bees weren't filling the grooves up, they were putting a layer over the top of the groove. I suppose that eventually they would have completely covered the grooved areas and trapped the beetles inside...maybe. :?
Anyhow...no more wood bound excluders for me!!! Lesson learned. Probably no more excluders of any kind...I made all my honey off of one hive this year, 80 pounds worth, and it had no excluder.
On a bright note...the bees are looking good. :)
Ed
Sounds like you got a great trap for the beetles. Just pull once a week and kill the beetles. Well, until the bees glue it all shut.
Well, if the beetles happen to come into the death trap we call a garage then that might work...they are "filed" for now. ;)
Ed
I have the plain metal queen excluders on some hives, the rest don't have any. I had no brood above the brood boxes on the ones without an excluder this year.
Joe
Joe, I guess I was experimenting a bit with the excluders. I went this spring/summer without excluders also. With all the swarming my bees did I still had one colony that produced three supers of honey. There was zero brood in these supers. I'm pretty well sold on no excluders, now.
Ed
On swarming, I didn't think there were that many bees in my hives. In a 7 day period I caught 6 swarms, good size swarms, from 3 hives. I ran out of boxes to put them in. During that week I heard about an old beek 83, about 5 miles away
that had lost his bees over the winter, I gave him the last 2 swarms. He was so happy and he says they are really doing great. Great feeling to help someone when you can.
Joe