I don't own one of these but since I have trouble finding the queen I think I could use one to seperate her from the workers if I'm doing a split. I've never seen what one looks like(the excluder not the queen)but I imagine that its like an inner cover with hardware cloth inside the frame instead of plywood. What size hardware cloth will workers fit through but not the queen? #6? or should I just buy one? I like building my own stuff. Are plastic ones better than wooden ones?
Up here in the great white north the metal ones are $12 the plastic ones around $5.They sort of look like the old refridgerator racks but much tighter grill.
By the way, are you a transit driver? just wondering cause I was for 11 years.
school bus.
Randy, that is a good question. I googled queen excluders (I looked through Michael's site, but nothing jumped out at me) and found this site that offers lots of information on the Q.E. Good luck, have a fantastic day. Cindi
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/excludertypes.html
Hey Randy, I also drive a school bus.
Steve
School bus driver,hmmm, summers off,........good fit!
Usually you buy an excluder. It needs great precision to work at it's best. If you are too poor or too cheap to buy one, #5 hardware cloth will work, but is harder on the bees than a real excluder.
If you only need a temporary one, the plastic ones are cheap. If you want a permanant one, I like the wood bound ones the best.
Micheal... You don't normally use excluders do you..?
>You don't normally use excluders do you..?
Not on a normal production hive. During queen rearing I always have a couple of hives with them. The breeder hive has one so I can easily find and confine the queen to the Jenter box. The finisher hives often have one so I can have a queenright finisher.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfaqs.htm#excluders