Queen Excluders

[peteinwilts]

Hi Guys

Not exactly DIY.

I am sorting through my kit, and topping up where necessary. Over the few years I have been beekeeping, I have already accumulated at least 6 different styles of Queen Excluder.

Interestingly, the holes are not all the same size. Even a single excluder can have wide variances in hole size. (relatively speaking)
My concern is that I ended up with a batch of 'bad' QX's with holes that are too small, and may need ditching.

What is the smallest acceptable size for a QX hole?

Cheers
Pete

 

[Apple]

This may depend on the type and even age of queen bee?

 

[peteinwilts]

I am more worried about bees getting stuck.

I have a couple of colonys of small bees, but am thinking of the regular heinz variety than a particular strain

 

[alanf]

At the risk of raising a different topic, Dave Cushman's site was one of the few with actual measured dimensions quoted. Around 4.2 to 4.4 mm slots seems the range depending on manufacturer.

I recall hearing of some plastic batches a couple of years back that were close to tolerance limits, some bees reluctant to pass through.

 

[Little John]

A while back I suffered from small black virgin queens which could easily get through commercial excluders, so I started to make my own from s/s tig wire. I chose 4.16mm as probably being the tightest I could get away with.

In use, the girls do have to wriggle a little to get through, but the s/s wire is very smooth so I'm not too worried about that, and I only use them for queen manipulations anyway - so they're not in place for long.

LJ