>Should we -- or do we -- have different spacings of excluder wire for >different species/races of bees? Allen, I can't speak to the excluder size, but we have worked with a variety of pollen scrapers over the last decade, some commercially available, some that we made. We also weighed thousands of bees from various parts of the U.S. Honey bees do vary in size more than is commonly acknowledged. As you know, bees reared in old comb may be emerging from smaller cells (all of the lining and relining sizes them down until the bees tear down and rebuild). With new foundation/comb different manufacturers use different size cells. Pollen scrappers made from thin material allows bees of more variable size to pass through. As a bit of thickness to the scraper material, and some colonies won't be able to work through them. Sort of like you or I trying to crawl through a tight culvert (tube) versus a wire hoop of the same size. You can wiggle through the hoop, not the tube. I once paid a beekeepers for a heat prostrated colony after he put an entrance mounted pollen screen on his hive and didn't follow our suggestions to watch the bees to be sure they could pass. I also suspect that different races of bees produce slightly different sized worker bees. Now, for the oddest observation. Four years ago we had a set of our electronic colonies in MT for several weeks. We were using our own manufactured pollen scrappers made by punching holes in a thin, stiff plastic. We pulled the pollen screens, loaded up the bees, and drove the colonies/hives from MT to MD. Four days later in MD, the bees were flying and we re-inserted the pollen scrappers. None of the bees could get through!! Same bees, same screens, same hive boxes. They worked four days earlier and had for some weeks. It's like the bees swelled up. I know that people on extended air flight sometimes get swollen feet. Didn't know this happened to bees! Never did figure it out. We had to use a different scrapper. Jerry J. Bromenshenk, Ph.D. Director, DOE/EPSCoR & Montana Organization for Research in Energy The University of Montana-Missoula Missoula, MT 59812-1002 E-Mail: [log in to unmask] Tel: 406-243-5648 Fax: 406-243-4184 http://www.umt.edu/biology/more http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees