Glossary
A flat screen placed between the hive's brood chamber and honey supers, with openings sized to allow worker bees through but block the larger queen. This prevents the queen from laying eggs in the honey storage area, ensuring clean, brood-free honey.
A queen excluder is a precisely manufactured screen made of wire, perforated metal, or plastic. The slots are exactly 0.163 to 0.164 inches wide, large enough for worker bees (which have a thorax width of about 0.155 inches) to squeeze through but too small for the queen (whose thorax is about 0.170 inches or wider) to pass. It is placed horizontally between the top brood box and the first honey super.
With the queen excluded from the supers above, any frames in those boxes will contain only honey, no eggs, larvae, or pupae. This makes extraction straightforward: you remove the honey supers knowing every cell is pure honey, without having to work around brood in the middle of your harvest frames.
Queen excluders are one of the more debated tools in beekeeping. Supporters point to the clean separation of honey and brood, which simplifies harvest and produces a visually superior product. Opponents call them "honey excluders," arguing that some worker bees are reluctant to pass through the tight openings, reducing the workforce in the supers and lowering honey yields.
The truth is somewhere in the middle and varies by colony. Some colonies pass through excluders without hesitation. Others are noticeably slower to move up. Factors include the brand and quality of the excluder (wire models generally impede bees less than stamped metal), colony temperament, and whether a strong nectar flow is providing motivation to expand upward.
We use queen excluders selectively based on each colony's behavior. For colonies that move through them readily, excluders provide clean honey supers with no downside. For colonies that seem hesitant, we sometimes start without an excluder, let the bees establish comb in the first super, then insert the excluder once they are committed to working above. Once bees have invested in drawing comb and storing honey in the super, they are far less likely to stop passing through the excluder.
It depends on your priorities. If clean, brood-free honey supers are important to you (and they are for most producers), a queen excluder is the simplest solution. If you prioritize maximum honey production and do not mind occasional brood in your supers, you can manage without one.
No. The queen simply cannot fit through the openings and remains safely below. She continues laying eggs in the brood chamber normally. The excluder is a passive barrier, not a trap. She is not harmed in any way.
Metal wire (flat or round), stamped sheet metal, and molded plastic. Wire excluders are generally preferred because the rounded wire creates less surface area for bees to climb over, allowing easier passage. Plastic excluders are the least expensive but may impede worker movement more.
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