Hive Top Queen Excluder

thingiverse

This thing is a queen excluder which fits into the standard 2" diameter hole found in most Langstroth-style inner covers. The excluder is a collared ring that fits into the hole, with the excluder comprised of 1 mm diameter rods with a gap of 4.1 mm between them. This gap size allows worker bees to move through the excluder, but the holes are too small for a queen. This excluder has a number of potential uses, but is a somewhat specialized item. A few possible uses include: 1) Along with a queen-excluding entrance reducer, this can be used to prevent queens from leaving with swarm. While not the best way to control swarming in the spring, it can work as a stop-gap measure until you have time to perform a proper hive inspection. 2) It can be used to force your queen to work a specific box. By placing an inner cover with this excluder between boxes, you can keep your queen in a specific box, while still leaving access for worker bees to care for brood in the other boxes. 3) As a tool to manage merging 2 colonies (or a swarm with a colony). Again, it keeps you queen in the correct box while allowing the colonies to merge with each other, withouth interfering with broodraising in any of the boxes. 4) It can be used to find your queen. Place an inner cover with this excluder in-place between boxes where you think you have a queen and wait 4-5 days. The box with the queen will have eggs, the box(es) without a queen will only have larva and capped brood.