In the world of beekeeping, the queen excluder is a piece of equipment that often sparks lively debate. Some beekeepers swear by them, finding them essential for hive management, while others prefer to let their queens roam free. Let's dive into what a queen excluder is, why you might use one, its dimensions, and where it fits in your hive.

What Exactly is a Queen Excluder?

Simply put, a queen excluder is a selective barrier you place inside a beehive. It's usually a grid made of plastic or metal (sometimes with a wooden frame) with precisely sized openings. These openings are just large enough for the smaller worker bees to pass through easily, but too small for the larger queen bee and the even larger drones (male bees) to fit through.

The standard gap size is typically around 0.163 inches (4.1 mm) or 4.2 millimeters. This small difference is what makes it so effective!

Why Use a Queen Excluder? Its Purpose Explained

The main reason beekeepers use a queen excluder is to confine the queen to a specific area of the hive, usually the brood boxes (where she lays eggs). This offers several key benefits:

• Keeps Brood Out of Honey Supers: This is the primary driver for most beekeepers. By preventing the queen from laying eggs in your honey supers (the boxes where surplus honey is stored for you to harvest), you ensure your harvested frames contain pure honey, free of developing brood, pollen, or cocoons. This makes honey extraction much cleaner and easier.

• Easier Queen Finding: If you know the queen is restricted to one or two brood boxes, it significantly narrows down the area you need to search when trying to locate her during an inspection (e.g., for re-queening or health checks).

• Simplified Honey Harvesting: When it's time to pull honey, you can confidently remove the supers above the excluder, knowing the queen isn't in them. This saves you the tedious work of brushing or shaking bees off frames that might contain brood.

• Streamlined Colony Management: For some beekeepers, it helps maintain a clear separation between the brood nest and honey stores, making hive management feel more predictable.

Understanding Queen Excluder Dimensions

Queen excluders are designed to fit snugly on top of the various Langstroth hive body sizes. They typically come in two main sizes to match 8-frame and 10-frame hives:

• For 10-Frame Langstroth Hives:

  • Typical external dimensions are around 16 1/4 inches (W) x 19 7/8 inches (L). If they have a wooden frame, they might be slightly larger overall.

  • These dimensions are designed to perfectly cover the top of a 10-frame brood box.

• For 8-Frame Langstroth Hives:

  • Typical external dimensions are around 14 inches (W) x 19 3/4 inches (L).

  • These are narrower to fit the 8-frame brood boxes.

The grid part of the excluder is quite thin, but if it comes with a wooden frame around it, that frame will add about $3/4$ inch ($1.9$ cm) to the height to maintain proper bee space.

Where Do You Put a Queen Excluder in the Hive?

The queen excluder is always placed between the brood chamber(s) and the honey supers.

Here's the typical setup:

1. Brood Box(es) at the Bottom: You'll have one or two (or sometimes more, depending on your setup) deep or medium boxes at the bottom of your hive dedicated to the brood nest. This is where the queen lives and lays all her eggs.

2. The Queen Excluder Goes Here: The queen excluder is placed directly on top of your uppermost brood box.

3. Honey Supers on Top: All your honey supers (the medium or shallow boxes where you want bees to store honey for your harvest) are then stacked on top of the queen excluder.

Crucial Placement Considerations:

• Timing is Key: The best time to install a queen excluder is in early spring, once your colony is strong and expanding, and you're about to add your first honey super.

• Know Your Queen's Location: Always make absolutely sure the queen is in the brood chamber (below the excluder) before you place it! If you accidentally trap her in the honey super above the excluder, she won't be able to lay eggs in the brood nest, which can severely harm or even kill the colony. You might need to carefully inspect frames to confirm her spot.

• Drone Dilemma: Drones cannot pass through the excluder. If you place the excluder too early or if there's drone brood in the honey supers, those drones will be trapped above the excluder and eventually die, potentially clogging the excluder. Some beekeepers provide an upper entrance above the excluder to allow drones to exit and re-enter.

• Winter Removal: It's generally recommended to remove the queen excluder in the fall after the honey flow ends and you've harvested. This allows the queen and the entire bee cluster to move freely throughout the hive during the cold winter months to access food stores. If left on, the queen could be isolated from her cluster and starve or freeze.

Is a Queen Excluder Right for Your Hive?

The decision to use a queen excluder comes down to personal preference and your beekeeping management style. Many commercial beekeepers use them for efficiency and to ensure clean honey harvests. Hobbyist beekeepers often experiment to see what works best for their bees and their local conditions.

Are you considering adding a queen excluder to your beekeeping toolkit, or are you curious about other hive management strategies?