Can I, please, hear more about queen excluders as winter mouse guards.
 
    Have people used a queen excluder, placed below the hive bodies, to keep
mice out of a hive in winter?
 
    I currently use rolled hardware cloth (half inch by half inch wire
screening) tucked into the opening of a plastic bottom board.   This is not
satisfactory because mice can, I think, get through the rolled screening at
the ends.  (I once put a mouse into a cage made of hardware cloth and
watched, in amazement and consternation, as the mouse oozed through the mesh
almost at a run.)  And the roll of screen doesn't stay in the hive opening.
It may pop out at one end because of temperature changes or it may be
pushed/pulled by an animal.  I'm looking for a better way.
 
Tim Sterrett
Westtown, (Southeastern) Pennsylvania, USA
[log in to unmask]