Langstroth vertical divider board

01 · WHAT IT IS

A wall with an excluder window, fitted to the box

It is a 5 mm plastic sheet that hangs like a frame and divides the chamber across its width. It carries a window with excluder grid, through which workers pass and the queen does not, and a ventilation grid; the internal slides lengthen and lower it until it rests on the walls and floor of the body, closing the gaps along the edges. It fits wooden and plastic Langstroth bodies; on Dadant it comes up short, and there is no version for Layens or the Portuguese reversível.

02 · WHAT IT IS USED FOR

Shrinking the volume, or two and three colonies in one body

The simplest use is concentrating a small colony: it goes after the last frame in use and the rest of the box stays outside, so a five-frame nuc winters or builds up in a ten-frame body with no spare air to heat. With one divider in the middle the body becomes two five-frame nucs; with two, three three-frame colonies, as ANEL proposes for queen banks and mating. And confining the queen to a few frames leaves the brood under control for whatever management you have in mind.

03 · WHAT IT CLOSES AND WHAT IT DOES NOT

The passage over the top is the excluder’s job

The window lets workers through: the two sections share population and only the queens are kept apart. Above the divider there is communication, so to stop a queen crossing you lay a queen excluder over the frames, and if you also want to cut the workers off, the propolis screen instead; both are ANEL parts bought separately. Each section also needs its own entrance: ANEL uses entrance caps and side entrances from its system; in wood you open one per section. Without those parts, what you have is one colony with a reduced chamber, not two colonies.

04 · FITTING

Vertical, down to the floor and with no gaps

It seats like a frame, lugs on the rebate and bottom edge against the floor, and the slides are adjusted until no light shows through. Check it after moving the hive and scrape the propolis that builds up in the window and the slides.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

Only the divider is supplied: excluder, propolis screen and separate entrances come apart.