Quick way to clean plastic Queen excluders.

Using hot water and soda crystals i heat up the water in a cut down barrel, using a gas burner underneath. Quick and easy!

[@douglasrush5060]

Doug (across the pond) Bob's your uncle,Fannies your aunt. I love this guy. Cheers mate

[@richardkuhn8115]

Great information Richard. You can always make use of the time. Thanks for sharing. … and Bob's your uncle!

[@r.u.sirius7423]

Keep a bucket of cold water next to your setup to dunk your strainer in. You won’t have to wait for it to “air-cool”. Love to watch your videos from Gainesville, Florida. USA

[@massachusettsprepper]

That really made that process short and sweet for sure. Thanks for sharing.

[@kamonreynolds]

Very handy and good information.

[@pomicultorul]

Please don't stop posting, you make my life easier everyday. This channel dispenses high quality, practical information and I am amazed that it does not have a much higher number of subscribers - that silly Google algorithm! Thank you for always finding time for us, we all know how hard it is to juggle everything.

[@gmskippy]

Great idea Richard this will help me also with cleaning my excluders!

[@beasbeesrva2615]

Great video Richard. I had never considered using washing soda (sodium carbonate) to clean hive components. Always been bleach and a scrub brush in the bathtub.

[@beebruns2023]

super idee richard merci pour cette astuce

[@konradrueb1567]

Outstanding!!! Thanks for sharing Richard.🐝safe and keep your smoker lit!! Konrad

[@gileshoney5796]

This is something I need to start doing this year. Thanks for sharing.

[@repeekeeb1]

Hi Richard, great video as usual. After extolling virtue of washing soda for twenty years I ran out last year and used bog standard clothes washing powder. Obviously it contains calcium carbonate as well, but if anything, the results were even quicker at lower temps and got everything shifted. Bio or non bio both worked just fine.

[@richardnoel3141]

repeekeeb1 thank, will try different things. Glad you liked the video

[@johngury]

Anytime you have an open flame near that melted wax...you have to be really careful. It's surprisingly volatile to say the least. One reason to use an electric insert or steamer.

[@BESHYSBEES]

We’ve gone and brought a hot water pressure washer from Karcher, we use the same process for older frames too but we use a 55 gal drum to boil them then a quick blast to clean them off, they should be soaked in sodium hypochlorite for few minutes to sterilise. AFB spores are heat resistant so boiling them won’t be hot enough to kill the spores, apparently wax dipping doesn’t kill it either it only traps the spore in the wax making the spore encapsulated so it can’t grow.

[@AntennaBee]

Great time saver well done 👍 unlike some of the crap

[@gimmieshelter1597]

Best apiculture tube Channel de lejos...saludos desde España

[@richardnoel3141]

¡gracias mi amigo! ¡Mis mejores deseos para una increíble temporada de apicultura!

[@macgates9578]

What are the crystals and where do u get them I’m in the US is this something you can get at a home improvement center????

[@rickwarner9142]

Smart , clean and sterilized. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ready to store.

[@imkereistappert3183]

Good way to do it🙂👍

[@houstonsheltonbees814]

Brilliant 👍👍. Cheers

[@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog]

A good job done What is that soda product ?

[@BESHYSBEES]

Hi Ian, hows the winter weather treating you? Days are just starting to get shorter here in Australia 🇦🇺 it’s a tell tale sign our season is coming to a close and yours will be starting up again soon enough. We had a lot of absconding this year (5-10%) with some terribly hot weather to blame, I guess they’re not fond of 47 Celsius and smoke haze

[@richardnoel3141]

a Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog it’s just plain soda crystals. In France they have a product manufactured by St Marc, that’s their trade name. Have since heard from a friend that he was chatting to a chemist and that this product, (any soda Crystal’s) is always a lot more effective at high temperature water , meaning between 70 and 100 degrees C. In cold water their hardly effective. I found this for sure! Saved me hours!

[@patdwyer6274]

@@richardnoel3141 using soda crystals in cold water you just leave the thing to be cleaned overnight or longer. Works well but maybe not an option for lots of queen excluders needing to be cleaned. I leave my hive tools in a bucket of washing soda crystals after use and rotate their use. Keeps them spotless.

[@natserog]

great video!! do like metal excluders at all Richard??

[@williamschulz6302]

Thanks great video 🐝🐝

[@coreymatheson4132]

I wasn't familiar with soda crystals so a google search found it at Amazon. Great information to know how to efficiently clean queen excluders. Thanks

[@billiamc1969]

We have not ever used these over the last 20 years as excluders are totally unnecessary. We run all 120 colonies as unlimited brood chamber, which has allowed us to streamline our operation and eliminate another piece of costly equipment and the bees are much easier to work and predict!!

[@richardnoel3141]

Hi, yes I know lots of reasons why many people don’t use excluders. I used to do the same as you. For us here we have to pull honey in may before it crystallises, when the queen is laying everywhere and we just can’t have brood in our supers. So we use that because but works for us! Your not wrong in what you do if it works for you!! Thanks for your comments!

[@ДмитрийАрабаджи-т2п]

This is a very difficult, dirty, complicated, dangerous method. All that was needed was to leave the grates on the outside in the fall. The bees themselves will clean everything.

[@richardnoel3141]

Дмитрий Арабаджи no sorry that does not work for us, it’s certainly not dangerous.

[@ApiaryManager]

Does the hot water distort those plastic excluders much? I've heard of people cleaning them with a pressure washer.

[@richardnoel3141]

Paul Walton hi Paul, the ones we have it does not affect them in slightest. I have in the pile, some olde ones that are about 6 years old and their still in perfect shape. I don’t know if we just got lucky here but these are made by Nicot and their really robust and not expensive. Good value for money when they last ages! Pressure washers are good but to be honest, i think this is quicker and a lot less mess!

[@kaistumer198]

It‘s the nicot ones, premium product. You can‘t do that with the cheap ones. To bad nicot is fully into dadant blatt and not doing Langstroth. Why don’t you use metal excluders?

[@ApiaryManager]

@@kaistumer198 Metal excluders are probably twice the price

[@kaistumer198]

Paul Walton well not quite double, but they easly last double the time of plastic. I got many that are 20 years old and more, also the handling is better

[@downunderfulla6001]

🍺🍺

[@markbutters5829]

Please be careful cutting those old barrels as my friends brother who was an engineer was cutting clean barrels! and one exploded and killed him.

[@richardnoel3141]

Mark Butters it’s a honey barrel with the top open. We don’t use oil drums.

[@markbutters5829]

@@richardnoel3141 I'm pleased to hear that's, I was just concerned that you or your KZbin follows may get a barrel which had been used for solvent or such like. My mates brother had cut barrels for years but this one went bang and blew his head to bits. It was his bees that I bought to start this fascinating hobby for me of bee keeping.

[@Vladimir_m9snik]

Не вижу смысла в лишней работе. Пчелы сами могут их почистить .

[@richardnoel3141]

здесь мы так не думаем. лучше их убирают как минимум раз в год. Спасибо за ваш комментарий