Hello All

I have read in a recent post that bees do not like travelling through a
queen excluder unless there is a honey flow on. The queen excluder thus
appears to be an impediment to the smooth running of the hive.

But if we do not use a queen excluder we get brood in at least the first super.

I read somewhere that the queen will rarely if ever travel from one box to
another around the edges of the hive, preferring to stay in the centre.
Workers and drones on the other hand will travel from box to box at the
edges as well as in the centre. This fact has, if my memory serves me
correctly, been used to construct a queen excluder which is only big enough
to cover the centre of the hive, ie if the hive dimension is 480mm by 480mm,
the 'cut down' queen excluder is a square somewhat smaller than this.
Clearly the smaller it is made the greater is the chance of the queen by
passing it, and the bigger it is made the more it is drifting back to the
problems it is trying to solve.

Has anybody heard of this idea, what is the optimum size, and is there any
experience of using it?

Sincerely

Tom Barrett
49 South Park, Foxrock
Dublin 18
Ireland
Tel + 353 1 289 5269
Fax + 353 1 289 9940