Queen excluder

A plastic or metal grid that is positioned in bee hives by bee keepers. The queen excluder has holes in it that are small enough to allow worker bees through but the larger queens and drones cannot pass through.

The purpose of the queen excluder is to prevent the queen laying eggs in some of the cells within the hive. The workers continue to provision the cells with honey and, because the brood are not present in these cells, the honey can easily be harvested.

A photograph of a queen excluder as used by bee keepers.
Photograph by Robert Engelhardt licensed under Creative Commons.

Related terms

• Africanised honey bees
• Apoidea
• Bee bread
• Cerumen
• Drone
• Honey
• Honey bee
• Queen
• Queen cell
• Queen substance
• Worker

Related pages on this web site

• Bees
• Bees and Beekeeping: From simple bee-ginnings
• Bees, Wasps and Ants - Order Hymenoptera

See other words beginning with Q