Laurence Edwards reviews five queen excluder styles for UK beekeepers. Molded plastic is cheapest and bee-friendly, freezing off debris easily. Wooden-framed excluders at £17-£20 are his favorite for bottom-bee-space hives, but he recommends molded plastic for most beekeepers.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, another Bite-Sized Bees today, and we're going to talk about the different queen excluders that are available on the UK market and which one I think is the best. So in this video, I'm going to go through all of the different styles of queen excluder that are on the UK market, tell you what I like about them, tell you what I don't like about them, tell you which one I think is the best, I'm going to try and do that in under 2 minutes. So first off is a molded plastic queen excluder. Now I really like these. These are by far and away the cheapest ones. It's got a nice simple pattern. It's molded and not punched, so it's really friendly on the bees' wings. You can use this on a top beespace hive. You can use it on a bottom beespace hive. They're cheap. They're easy to clean by chucking them in the freezer, and then you can just get all of the propolis and wax off like that. These are a very Good queen excluder. Don't discount them just because they're the cheapest. Then you get a similar pattern made of zinc. So these are galvanized, exactly the same pattern as the plastic ones. These are punched, however, though. They're perfectly acceptable. They're quite a bit more expensive than the plastic version though. And if I had to choose between the two, I'd always go for the plastic version because they're easier to clean, far less snaggy on the corners, don't deform or bend anywhere near as much, And they're a lot cheaper. Then we move on to the wire-type excluders. They're gonna last a lot longer, they're a lot more solid, they're nowhere near as snaggy, and there's no damage at all for the bees passing through them. They don't deform anywhere near as much, and you can lever them off with your hive tool without doing too much damage. Then you move on to the wooden framed versions. Now these are the ones that I use in a lot of my hives because I'm on a bottom bee base system, I like the wooden rim, which lifts the queen excluder up and gives you free movement over the frames for the bees. So I'm a big fan of the wooden rim system. However, these are considerably more expensive than any of the other queen excluders here. Do note though, there's 2 different types of wooden queen excluder system here. So this one here, you've got a flush surface on the top, and then you've got a full bee space underneath, and you've got a properly lapped and glued corner joint. This is the one you want. Don't go for the cheaper stapled inferior version that I'm going to show you next. So this version, you get a bee space either side, and I've seen some of the manufacturers do it so you get just under a bee space on one side and then like half a bee space on the other side. They're a complete mess. So make sure whenever you're buying a wooden rimmed queen excluder, you go for the one that's flush on the top And then has a full bee space rim underneath. Now I appreciate that's a real quickfire introduction to all of the different types of queen excluders. So which one do I think is the best? My personal preference is for a wooden framed wired queen excluder. They cost so much more though. These are between like £17 and £20 each. Do I get enough benefit out of the wooden frame ones to justify the additional cost? Definitely not. If I was going back starting again later on this year, I need to buy 100 queen excluders to do some demarays. Which one of these queen excluders do you think I'm going to buy? And I'm going to go with the plastic molded queen excluder. Bee Equipment do a good one, Mazemore do a very good one, and you can get it cheap in the sales. And Abello do a good one as well. They're all pretty similar. They're not punched, they're molded, and they're nice and gentle on the bees. If you do a comparison of the cost versus the features and the benefits that you're going to get in your hives, I would always go for a molded plastic queen excluder. All of my hives have got these ones on, but I just don't see the additional benefits. And the few hives that I've got that do have the molded plastic ones on, absolutely fine. I don't get the snags, I don't get the damage, they're easy to clean, and they're cheap. So my recommendation for you buying queen excluders, if you've not got any equipment or you're looking to buy any more, go for a molded plastic queen excluder from one of the big beekeeping suppliers. So I've probably gone a little bit over my 2-minute limit for Bite Size Bees, but we have reviewed 5 queen excluders there. I've spoken to you a little bit about their features, and I've told you what I like, what I don't like, and what I would recommend for you. So I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you're enjoying the new condensed Bite Size B series. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
