These vital pieces of beekeeping equipment do exactly as their name implies. They exclude the queen from parts of the hive as and when the beekeeper requires. This is because the queen is slightly larger than a normal worker bee and cannot pass through the slots. They are used almost exclusively to keep the queen in the brood body. By doing this, the beekeeper restricts the queen to egg laying in this one box, leaving the supers full of only honey.

Available for National/Commercial and WBC hives only. When fitting a national or commercial excluder, as it is square, place the excluder with the slots running across the frames.

The slotted steel type is extremely popular. Made from 0.5mm galvanised steel and produced on our own tool in the UK. Each excluder has a ¾" margin. Not as warm to the bees as a plastic excluder and can be prone to buckling. This is due to the excluder lying flat and in close contact with the frames. The bees then propolise the occasional spaces between the excluder and frame top bar making their removal quite difficult at times. Slot is in a staggered pattern and measures 4.3x19mm.