Plastic Queen Excluder Dadant blatt Nicot

01 · WHAT IT DOES AND DOES NOT

Brood-free honey above, at two prices

The excluder exploits a size difference: the worker crosses the grid and the queen, broader in the thorax, does not. The result is a super with no laying, no old brood and none of the pollen that goes with it — cleaner honey, easier to extract. Two prices worth knowing first: drones do not pass either, so if you fit the grid with drones above they end up trapped and need a way out; and some colonies, particularly weaker ones, work the super more slowly with an excluder than without. Hence it goes on with a strong colony and a flow coming in, not before.

02 · THE MOULDED PLASTIC

It neither rusts nor opens up at the welds

It is a single injection-moulded piece in recyclable food-grade plastic, semi-rigid. Against a welded wire excluder it has no joints to give way and no bars to go out of line with use, and it does not rust. The surface is smooth and the edges rounded, which is what stops bees catching as they cross. It cleans with hot water — the maker declares resistance up to 110 °C — and in the cold propolis snaps off with the hive tool without leaving burrs.

03 · THE MEASUREMENT THAT MATTERS

The footprint of the box, not the frame top bar

Here is the usual buying mistake, and it is not the one normally told. On a hive, the difference between Blatt and US is explained by the frame top bar; on an excluder, the frame is irrelevant: what decides is whether the piece rests on the rim of the box. This one is for 10-frame Dadant Blatt, the French and Italian size, and on a Dadant US body — the common one in Spain, and wider — it falls short and will not seat. So the check is direct: measure your box on the outside, not the frames.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It works on a wooden or plastic body alike, as long as it is 10-frame Blatt. And once fitted, do not forget it there: when the supers come off, the excluder comes off with them — left in place over winter it gets in the way of the cluster.