Queen Excluder with two entrances ANEL®

01 · WHAT IT DOES AS STANDARD

Keeping the brood out of the honey

Set between the brood box and the super it does the usual job: the worker goes through, the queen does not, and what you get above is honey without brood. The perimeter frame is what sets it apart from a bare grid — it leaves the bee space between the top bars and the grid, so it gets less propolised and does not stick to the frames every time you open up.

02 · THE TWO GATES

An entrance of its own for the upper storey

It carries two entrances with a gate, opened or closed according to what you are doing. Open, they give the upper box its own way out, which takes the load off the main entrance in a heavy flow. In splitting work the rule is to point those entrances the opposite way to the brood box entrance, so each colony leaves and returns on its own side without crossing.

03 · TWO QUEENS AND CONFINEMENT

Two colonies, or a queen on two frames

With another excluder grid on top it becomes a double excluder and lets you keep two queens in the same hive, one above and one below. The inner partitions take vertical dividers to confine the queen: that is what you use to limit laying ahead of a flow, to treat for varroa with the brood under control, and to split without breaking up your equipment.

04 · THE WEAK POINT

The gates, and the propolis

What breaks over time is the gates, and nearly always for the same reason: they are forced while glued down with propolis. Before working them, free the propolis with the hive tool and move them by hand, not with the lever. The rest of the excluder is cleaned by scraping cold or with a cleaning comb, which is how the wax comes out of the grid without warping it.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It measures 52.3 × 42.15 cm and is one centimetre thick: that is the Langstroth size, not the Dadant one. The second grid for the double excluder goes separately.