Little John
Drone Bee
- Joined
- May 27, 2012
- Messages
- 1,655
- Reaction score
- 4
- Location
- Boston, UK
- Hive Type
- Other
- Number of Hives
- 50+
In my opinion there's something very wrong in the world of Queen Excluders - bees come in different sizes, and yet the Q/X is a 'one size fits all' piece of kit. Or at least, that's what each manufacturer provides.
Having said that - there's also considerable variation between manufacturers.
This is a list from Dave Cushman's site (in mm.):
And our friends over at Wiki have the spacing listed as 4.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_excluder
Now some of my virgin queens are very small, and keep getting through the zinc excluders I already have, so as I needed a couple of small excluders to make a Morris Board with, I decided to make some 'tighter' QX's yesterday using a method I developed last year - only this time I took a picture in case anyone else wants to play around with this.
A dial vernier (or micrometer etc) is useful for establishing the thicknesses of spacing material - which can be coins (which are precise, and already listed), or pieces of CD plastic - anything which has been standardised. For fine-tuning, pieces of plastic sheeting, sellotape etc can be used. With thin material, it's almost essential to measure multiple sheets (say, 10) to determine the exact thickness of each individual sheet.
Having made a list of spacer thicknesses, construction is fairly straightforward. For the 100mm span required for the Morris Board, I used 1.6mm 316 s/s TIG wire (the stuff I have is actually 1.59) which comes in 1 metre lengths - 1 kg for around £15 - that's something like 67 metres of wire (if memory serves).
Ok - so here's the method I've settled on using:
What may not be obvious is that the working surface is a gentle (5%-ish) inclined plane, which allows the coins used for spacing to gently rest against the previous wire.
In the pic, 2 x 2p coins (the new copper-coated steel coins) gives a spacing of 4.06 mm in theory. In practice, they provide a spacing of 4.08 mm (-0/ + 0.02 mm). So this results in a much tighter QX than anything on the market - but also one made of smooth wire which is gentle on the bees.
I subjected one of these QX's to a 'bee-test' this morning for an hour, and the bees were wriggling through ok - but it is a slight effort for them - so I'll make another pair at 4.15 mm and then compare them.
BTW - this is for Queen-rearing purposes, not for Queen-exclusion to honey-supers, for which I'm sure I'd use an off-the-shelf product if I used QX's for this purpose - which I don't.
LJ
Having said that - there's also considerable variation between manufacturers.
This is a list from Dave Cushman's site (in mm.):
Code:
zinc 4.38
plastic 4.34 - 4.36
Herzog wire 4.22
welded wire 4.3
wood & wire 4.14
EU standard 4.3And our friends over at Wiki have the spacing listed as 4.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_excluder
Now some of my virgin queens are very small, and keep getting through the zinc excluders I already have, so as I needed a couple of small excluders to make a Morris Board with, I decided to make some 'tighter' QX's yesterday using a method I developed last year - only this time I took a picture in case anyone else wants to play around with this.
A dial vernier (or micrometer etc) is useful for establishing the thicknesses of spacing material - which can be coins (which are precise, and already listed), or pieces of CD plastic - anything which has been standardised. For fine-tuning, pieces of plastic sheeting, sellotape etc can be used. With thin material, it's almost essential to measure multiple sheets (say, 10) to determine the exact thickness of each individual sheet.
Having made a list of spacer thicknesses, construction is fairly straightforward. For the 100mm span required for the Morris Board, I used 1.6mm 316 s/s TIG wire (the stuff I have is actually 1.59) which comes in 1 metre lengths - 1 kg for around £15 - that's something like 67 metres of wire (if memory serves).
Ok - so here's the method I've settled on using:
What may not be obvious is that the working surface is a gentle (5%-ish) inclined plane, which allows the coins used for spacing to gently rest against the previous wire.
In the pic, 2 x 2p coins (the new copper-coated steel coins) gives a spacing of 4.06 mm in theory. In practice, they provide a spacing of 4.08 mm (-0/ + 0.02 mm). So this results in a much tighter QX than anything on the market - but also one made of smooth wire which is gentle on the bees.
I subjected one of these QX's to a 'bee-test' this morning for an hour, and the bees were wriggling through ok - but it is a slight effort for them - so I'll make another pair at 4.15 mm and then compare them.
BTW - this is for Queen-rearing purposes, not for Queen-exclusion to honey-supers, for which I'm sure I'd use an off-the-shelf product if I used QX's for this purpose - which I don't.
LJ
