176 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



The Hanson ventilator, as used by 

 E. F. Atwater. 



those made of alternate strips of metal 

 and wood, with a rim giving a bee- 

 space above the slats. Not only the old 

 plain excluders interfere more or less 

 with the accuracy of the bee-spaces, 

 but in removing they are easily kinked, 

 so that quite a per cent of them "leak" 

 queens. 



But the factory-made, slatted exclud- 

 ers are too frail for general use. They 

 also contain more openings than neces- 

 sary or useful. In Cut A we see an 

 exc'.uder such as we use, with very 

 good results. The rim is 5^-inch thick 

 (about ^-^-inch thicker than the rims of 

 the excluders regularly supplied by the 

 factories.) The slats are ^-inch thick. 



about 234-inch wide and 

 grooved on their edges, 

 so that .five strips of 

 two-row zinc are used. 

 AH wooden parts being 

 ''g-inch thicker than in 

 the regular goods, and 

 slats over twice as wide, 

 makes these excluders 

 stronger and more dur- 

 able than the regular 

 goods. The corners are 

 not halved. This ex- 

 cluder also contains the 

 feature valued by R. C. 

 Aiken; a row of holes at 

 the outside, so bees can 

 pass directly up the hive- 

 side into the super. 



In Cut B, we have an 

 example of our latest 

 excluders, of which we 

 have 200 in use. It is 

 almost the same as the 

 other, except that the 

 corners of the rim are 

 halved, and there is no 

 row of openings at the 

 extreme outside. 



This is even stronger 

 and more durable than 

 the other style, as halv- 

 ing the corners permits more thorough 

 nailing, and the side strips of the rim 

 are also firmly nailed to the outside ^- 

 inch slats. Wishing to test the new wire 

 excluders, we put two rows of it in 

 each excluder, as shown. We think 

 that the wire is better than zinc, as by 

 actual measurement it is more accurate, 

 and no doubt permits the bees to pass 

 more freely. The only reason why 

 more rows of openings are used in this 

 excluder, is that we could get the nar- 

 rower strips more easily than wider 

 ones. In actual use, we find that the 

 bees wax up the openings about the 

 same in either style, though this may 

 not have any bearing on the relative 

 freedom of passage. So far as our 



