{"id":3115,"date":"2019-01-26T17:30:38","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T01:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beekeepingcoach.com\/?p=439"},"modified":"2023-03-27T13:07:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T20:07:14","slug":"should-i-use-a-queen-excluder-in-my-beehive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/backyardvisitors.com\/should-i-use-a-queen-excluder-in-my-beehive\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I use a Queen excluder in my beehive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Recently, while attending a field seminar in beekeeping, I realized there was a controversy regarding Queen excluders and whether or not to use them. While most of the beekeeper attendees did use Queen excluders, there was a small but passionate group of beekeepers that did not use Queen excluders in their beehives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I decided to research this question of \u201cwhether or not to use Queen excluders\u201d further and this is what I found: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pros:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cons:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n PROS of using a Queen excluder:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A Queen excluder d Most beekeepers become beekeepers to be able to harvest honey. In that pursuit, they will not want anything but pure honey in the beehive frames that they are going to harvest for honey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a queen bee is not excluded from laying eggs in a newly added super, by the use of a queen excluder, the beekeeper will find the extracted honey with brood in it will not produce the pure unadulterated honey that most beekeepers strive to attain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the extracted honey from a brood frame, the beekeeper will find pollen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a queen bee lays eggs in a new frame, the worker bees will start to designate part of that frame has an area to deposit pollon. Pollen is a necessary nurturant to metamorphis a newly laid egg through the larval stage and emerge as an adult bee ready to work straight out of the birth cell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most beekeepers will also be worried that the harvested honey will contain remnants of cell debris from the newly hatched larva. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Researching this birth-cell contamination concern further I find that most beekeepers agree that a brood cell is completely sanitized after the birth of the bee, therefore, there will be no debris in the honey harvest from a brood cell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However the brood cell, even after cleaning, will have a darkened wax structure which most beekeepers attribute to larvae excrement during the development of a larva into a fully functioning adult bee. There is no evidence that this darkened wax cell foundation adds any contaminates or changes the flavor of the extracted honey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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