Yes, highly recommended.
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There is three types of metal QX, galvanized, zinc plated and stainless steel wire sold here. The dearest is stainless steel. I have all three types bought when I was desperate to buy a metal QX decades ago and all are still in service. Back when I started bee keeping you could only buy a gal QX and nothing wrong with them. Once the bees coat some wax over them none will rust or deteriorate. I prefer the zinc coated as they are as smooth as SS and 1/2 the price at my local bee gear shop.
Cheers
Thanks for the link @stevo. Rusty makes some good points there as usual.
I still appreciate Jim’s input but it does look like a barbaric practice which I’m not comfortable with.
But then so is the bees’ habit of stinging the local fauna to death to take over a hollow.
Probably best strategy for me is extra super vigilance and hive management.
There’s another version of metal excluder available here in WA, the punched metal sheet type, which I’m not a fan of.
https://www.guilfoylewa.com.au/product/punched-metal-8-10-excluder/
Best to stick to wire excluders in my limited experience. The plastic ones I got from Flow where cheap and best replaced before they fail and the queen starts laying in the Flow frames and end up with a bigger problem.
Ive seen the punched metal QX over here but no experience with them. Just a thought is that this type seems it would be more restrictive to the number of bees that could move thru per minute. I also can’t fault the wire excluders so happy to use them. Never had an issue with them.
Cheers
Oh @Steve, I thought they “were” blowflys, as I didn’t actually see it.
@Honeyeater, my flow hive2 come with the black plastic QX, how long do they last for???
No time at all. I don’t trust them, even fresh out of the box. I use the metal rod type. So much more reliable
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@Dawn_SD I now have one of the metal QX, but I won’t be needing it until the start of Spring, as my bees got a late start (mid November 2020), as they had run out of stock of the FH2 when I ordered mine. They still have 1frame to fill, so now it’s a wait until Spring, and to start planning to get my FH2 ready for winter.
I have finally gotten my shade structure permanently built, can’t show just yet a pic of it, as a photo of it is only on my mobile phone, and not here on my iPad.