Crown board with 4 cm feeding eke and ventilation

Crown board for Langstroth and Dadant hives with a small detail that doubles its usefulness: the perimeter frame is 4 cm tall, so it not only seals the brood box like any standard crown board but also leaves 3 cm of clear space between the top bars of the frames and the outer roof of the hive. That gap is exactly the height needed to fit a syrup feeder bag or a rapid frame-feeder without the roof sitting crooked or failing to close.

The problem it solves. If your hive has a shallow outer roof — typical of flat metal-clad lids or budget telescoping roofs — placing a syrup bag on top of the frames leaves the roof balanced on the bag itself, with risk of rain ingress, robbing and bees trapped at the rim. This crown board acts as a feeding eke: it raises the roof by 3 cm and creates the headspace you need for emergency feeding, winter feeding with fondant or candy, syrup in a bag or a rigid Miller-type feeder turned upside down.

Central ventilation disc. A round plastic vent sits centred in the board, with a fine mesh and a pull tab. It allows ventilation during short transports or hot days without bees escaping, and also doubles as the access hole for a rapid feeder mounted on top. To keep the vent shut in winter, just rest the feeder bag or rigid feeder over it and it stays blocked.

Build. Base in tablex (high-density fibreboard, stable and resistant to hive humidity) with a solid pinewood perimeter frame joined 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: