Hi, Newbee here and a quick question about Mouse guards on a langstroth hive. I installed 2 mice guards for the winter. My guards have round holes.
My question is; will the Bee’s still be able to remove their dead Bee’s with the guards in place?
I do have a Flow Hive, do they have or can you purchase a mouse guard?
Yes they can. They can even remove deadies using an upper entrance, so a mouse guard is no problem at all. 
Not to my knowledge. I just made an entrance reducer with a maximum opening of 9mm tall. An adult mouse skull is 9mm across in the smallest dimension (don’t ask how I know, but yes, I did lab work in neuroscience once…), so as long as you keep the opening at that size or less, you will not get an adult mouse in your hive.
You can make such a reducer very simply by gluing (a good PVA glue is fine) craft sticks or paint stirrers into the right size to wedge into the entrance. If the opening is less than 6mm (1/4") tall, because of stick thickness, sand it so that it is bigger than that to help with trash removal and drone escape in the spring.
Thanks again Dawn!!!
You are a wealth of information and I appreciate you very much!
Could you please put up a picture of the mouse guard fitted
I don’t seem to be able to find a photo of it in place, but here it is before I wedged it into the entrance:
Pretty simple concept. 
Thank you for the photo, why haven’t flow hive included this inexpensive item with the Flow Hive 2?
Remove the mouse guard and turn it upside down and re-fit it to the hive and you will have arches. The bees will freely walk under the arches. With the holes at the bottom they can’t get through the holes. In that position it is a means of locking the bees in while still giving them air flow.
Regards Dan
I have added a photo of the mouse guard fitted in this thread, hope you can find it. It not only keeps out mice of course, it keeps out the cane toads which is a much bigger problem in Australia.
Regards Mark
If they did you can be sure people would whinge they did it wrong. 
Do other manufacturers supply entrance reducers/mouse guards with their product?
Just noticing an old thread here but for what it’s worth, yes, when I buy new Lang equipment here in the US, they always throw in a wooden entrance reducer. This isn’t the same thing as a mouse guard however - what I’d call a mouse guard is made of metal & has holes, similar to the one in Peter’s pic, that doesn’t fit on a Flow entrance - hence the reason Dawn suggests the wooden reducer 
.
I’m guessing the reason that Flow doesn’t throw this kind of thing in is that reducing the entrance isn’t as common in Australia? And if one would use a reducer as a mouse guard, then we’re getting into pest management tools and where do you stop? 
@Eva Maybe I’m a bit cynical but they cost few $'s for a mouse guard if you buy bulk. I wonder why Flow Hive sells the plastic QX instead of the quality metal QX, or at least offers it as an upgrade.
Cheers
Maybe the metal excluder would burst the allowable box weight and increase postage by 50$? Flow does put an extreme amount of good quality gear into one box shippable all around the world.
It’s not hard to replace your dodgy plastic QX with a local quality metal one after a year or two.
What is the allowable box weight that you are quoting??
Really, Your using the wrong courier for delivery of a QX if they do charge $50.
Maybe name the courier that quoted you that price so we can avoid being ripper off.
Of course we can, and have to, replace a plastic QX as they fail from age.
But you are ignoring my suggestion that Flow Hive could make a great product even better if a metal QX was an optional extra that would last a lifetime.
After all, was it not you complaining on this site recently they you couldn’t buy a metal 8 frame QX with timber edging in Australia???
