{"id":131024,"date":"2025-06-14T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.hobbyfarms.com\/?p=131024"},"modified":"2025-06-13T15:33:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T19:33:35","slug":"queen-excluders-should-you-use-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hobbyfarms.com\/queen-excluders-should-you-use-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Excluders: What They Are and Should You Use One?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen excluders are a common beekeeping<\/a> tool used to manage where the queen bee can lay her eggs within the hive. By placing a queen excluder between the brood box and the honey supers, beekeepers can prevent the queen from entering the upper boxes, keeping brood out of the honey harvest. While some beekeepers swear by their effectiveness, others argue that queen excluders can disrupt the natural flow of the hive.<\/p>\n

So, are queen excluders right for your apiary? Here’s what you need to know.<\/p>\n

What Is a Queen Excluder?<\/h2>\n

When you pull out a beeframe<\/a> to use for honey harvesting, you prefer those perfectly formed, wall-to-wall frames filled with glorious capped honey. These are the frames that are easy to place in an extractor, or for cutting comb away under the crush-and-strain method.<\/p>\n

But things become more complicated when there are eggs, larvae, pupae, and queen cells scattered among your honey! One remedy is to utilize a queen excluder. This is a very simple tool\u2014just a metal or plastic screen that is placed above the brood boxes and below the honey supers. A queen excluder makes use of the different anatomy of a queen bee and a worker bee. The holes in the excluder are sized and shaped with such dimensions that worker bees are able to traverse the excluder, but the queen cannot fit through. As a result, only honey is stored above, while the queen is restricted to laying brood only in the lower boxes.<\/p>\n

How a Queen Excluder Works in a Langstroth Hive<\/h2>\n

In a classic Langstroth beehive, the queen is permitted to travel anywhere she wants to throughout the hive. As she travels unrestricted, she naturally lays eggs in any available cell she has a mind to, in any hive box, high or low. Some queens may tend to lay eggs in the lower sections of the hive, and these boxes are often referred to as \u201cbrood boxes\u201d\u2014since that\u2019s where the larvae are raised. The upper portions of the hive are called \u201csupers\u201d or \u201choney supers\u201d since they\u2019re higher up in the \u201csuperstructure.\u201d A lot of beekeepers use smaller boxes up there to keep the weight of all that honey manageable.<\/p>\n

But since the queen isn\u2019t restricted in where she may go, she might very well lay eggs\u2014and the colony will subsequently raise larvae\u2014in the supers. She might place a good number of eggs in the brood boxes where they belong, but a portion of her eggs might be up in the supers.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t really matter to the bees\u2014they\u2019ll continue to happily store honey and pollen around the eggs. But it might matter to you when it comes time to harvest honey.<\/p>\n

Benefits of Using a Queen Excluder<\/h2>\n

With honey frames that are kept \u201cclean\u201d and easier for harvesting by using a queen excluder, you\u2019ll also likely find fewer worker bees up in the supers when you\u2019re ready to harvest, since they tend to follow where the queen is. And during hive inspections, it\u2019s handy to know that the queen is guaranteed to be down in the lower boxes.<\/p>\n