Queen excluder for 6-frame nucs

01 · WHAT IT ACTUALLY DOES

The queen stays below, not above

Set between the brood chamber and the super of the nuc, the excluder keeps the queen in the brood chamber — which is where she belongs — and lets only the workers up. What you get is not more honey: it is honey with no brood in it, a super you can harvest whole and a brood nest that does not sprawl. In a six-frame nuc, where space is short, that separation is appreciated more than in a full hive.

02 · HOW TO FIT IT

Flat, seated and not forced

It rests on the top bars, flat and covering the whole mouth of the nuc: leave a gap at one side and the queen will find it. At 0.3 cm thick it steals no height from the stack. And a seasonal warning: take it out for wintering. An excluder left in over winter can split the cluster — the bees move up to the stores and the queen stays below, alone and in the cold.

03 · THE PLASTIC

Light, washable and with no edge

Being recyclable food-grade plastic it does not rust or distort the way a badly treated metal grid does, and it weighs what a handful of empty frames weighs: 172 g. It gets propolised, as everything set over the top bars does, and it is cleaned cold — scraping or with pressure water — never with heat: plastic warps, and a warped excluder no longer seats properly.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It measures 49.2 × 27 cm: that is the size of a 6-frame nuc, not of a 10-frame hive. Check the mouth of your nuc before ordering.