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Bee hives have been around for centuries in different shapes, designs and sizes. It wasn't until the Langstroth design that the bee hive actually became standardised. There are still many different types of bee hive in use across the world.

Queen Excluders haven't been in use for long. Queen bee excluders are a relative new addition to the bee hive structure. The metal frame and rods are designed to keep queen bees excluded from a specific area of the bee hive construction. Essentially, The queen bee needs to be kept excluded from gaining access to the super chamber when used with a Langstroth bee hive.

Other Names ::

The metal rods with metal borders made from Aluminium have many names. Here in South Africa, they can be referred to as bee separators, queen separators, bye uitsluiters, excluders, queen excluders, bee excluders and queen blockers.

What Does the Queen Excluder do? ::

The Queen excluder keeps the queen bee from laying eggs in the honey comb to be harvested by the beekeeper. If you don't use the queen excluder between the brood chamber and super chamber then the queen bee will lay eggs in both areas making harvesting of honey particularly complicated as the honey comb is mixed with brood, eggs and honey.

The mainstream beehive designs used in South Africa are the Langstroth beehive & Jackson Beehive. The Langstroth Bee hive hasn't been changed much since its first inception in the 1800s. Small changes have been made do incorporate aluminium covers, the type of weather protection used on the wood and the use of a queen excluder to prevent egg laying in the super chamber.

The bee hive made beekeeping manageable as before the advent of the bee hive, bee colonies would be raided for their golden liquid and usually the colony would be destroyed in the process. This created the need for a manageable method to keep bees, transport them and harvest honey from them without causing damage or destruction to the bee colony.

Specialised USES of Queen Separators ::

When catching or trapping a trekking swarm there is a 50/50 chance the honeybee colony will leave before they can settle in. The trick -if you have the bees in a langstroth bee hive- to keep the queen bee from leaving, you place the queen separator between the floor board and the brood chamber. This way the worker bees can come and go as they like but the queen bee cannot actually leave the brood chamber.

After a week or so, the queen would have begun laying and bees would have built comb and this makes the chance of the bees leaving much lower now. Remember to remove it after a week or so and store it for when the colony is ready for a super box to be placed on top.

Not much has changed with regards to the Langstroth hive design in the last century other than the introduction of innovations such as plastic frames, plastic queen excluders and the like.

Find out more about bee hives...

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