The Rhombus Clearer

I opted for use a Rhombus clearer board to remove the bees from the honey super. There are other methods, but this appeared the friendliest way to get the bees down from the box so we could take the honey away to harvest. I decided I would have a go at making one of these myself. Given it's only used for a short period of time I guessed it didn't need to be made by a master carpenter to survive just a few hours or a day fitted to the hive.

The idea of the clearer is the bees head down in search of the queen pheromone, heading through the holes, onto the clearer, through the holes at the end and can't get back in to the honey super, resulting in a bee free box to remove.

The components and tools I used to make the board are listed below;

• Rhombus clearer - £1.70
• 8mm sheet plywood 46cm x 46cm - £14 (but required less than a third of the board and would have been cheaper to get normal plywood, not marine!)
• 20mm x 12mm baton - free from the timber yard!
• 32mm wood drill bit
• 1/4 inch screws - £1
• Glue
• Saw

The guys in the timber yard cut the board to the size I wanted (46cm x 46cm) to match the dimensions of the hive. While I was in the yard I noticed loads of batons in a container. Curious, I asked what they were for and the guy said they were free and to take as much as I wanted! Winner. Because the top of the frames are pretty much flush with the top of the box this board would be sitting on, it needed some form of spacer for the clearer to make the whole thing fit properly. Queue free wood! There were pieces which would prove perfect so I grabbed a load of them, paid for the plywood and went on my way.

I drilled a couple of holes in the board. I've seen both one and two holes in the board but decided to drill two holes just in case there was a lot of traffic trying to squeeze through at once! The drill bit destroyed a little bit of the top layer, but I'm sure the bees won't mind. After this I cut the lengths of baton to fit the perimeter of the wood and used some outdoor glue to stick them down. Once the glue was dry the following morning I screwed the clearer to the board, resulting in the picture below.