Flat crown board with 1.8 cm rim and ventilation

Standard crown board for sealing the brood box of Langstroth, Dadant US and Dadant Blatt hives. The perimeter rim is 1.8 cm tall, leaving just 4 mm of inner clearance above the top bars of the frames — exactly the bee space, so bees don't glue the crown board to the wax with propolis. This is the crown board you want when your outer roof already has enough height of its own and you don't need to lift anything.

When this crown board fits. If your hive is already topped with a deep outer roof — telescoping roofs, gabled roofs or roofs with built-in headspace — there is no point adding a tall feeding eke underneath: you'd only add weight and volume without gaining anything. This crown board does what a classic crown board has always done: cover the frames, insulate the brood box from the roof and seal the hive on top. Nothing more. If instead you need clearance inside to fit a syrup bag or a rapid frame-feeder, the version with a 4 cm feeding eke is what you want, not this one.

Central ventilation disc. A round plastic vent with mesh and pull tab is fitted in the centre. It does three things well: ventilation during hot days or short transports without bees escaping, an access hole for a rapid feeder rested directly on the disc when needed, and a moisture outlet during overwintering if you leave it half-open.

Build. Base in tablex (high-density fibreboard, stable and resistant to hive humidity) with a solid pinewood perimeter frame on all four sides. The smooth tablex surface gives the bees nothing extra to propolise; the solid-wood frame is the part that bears the load of the roof, the weight of supers stacked above and the prying of the hive tool when the crown board is glued tight with propolis.

Compatibility. Available in the two standard sizes used in Europe:

• Langstroth / Dadant US — 510 × 425 mm outer (the same footprint works for both formats)
• Dadant Blatt (French/Italian Dadant, the most common Dadant on the continent) — 500 × 425 mm outer

Select the size from the drop-down to match your brood box.

Technical sheet: