Little Giant® Bee Escape | Porter Style One-Way Hive Valve for Beekeeping | Bee Gate | Beekeeping Supplies

Appears well made but doesn't fit in Mann Lake top cover. I'll eventually widen the hole and see how it actually works.

you'll have to modify an inner cover and doesn’t work as well as a traditional escape.

Condensed some boxes down for winter. After about 36 hours the supers were empty. Just be wary popping it back out. May be a bee or two chilling in the door way. Don't ask how I found out...

Love these things I built the triangle maze type excluder last season it worked very well. Took several hrs to build with the proper saws and pneumatic nailers. So I saw these and decided to try them on my other two hives. I hell 6.00 and change what the hell give it a try. I got two put them on inner covers then put inner cover on top brood box between honey supers . That was sunday these two simple excludeders compaired to the one complicated one I built are all working about the same. These simple excludeder's are worth twice the price they cost. I love simple.They slide apart so the little gates cannbe adjusted by slightly bending the gate strips some came perfect opening and some were to wide. And had to be closed up a tad.

I have Little Giant hives, which I’m quite happy with. Because of that, I was expecting these bee escapes to be well made.The way they work is that bees go in the hole and then can exit to either side. Each side has two, very light weight plastic levers that form a V shape. The bees enter from the large end of the V and as they push toward the smaller end, they push the levers apart until they pass completely through and the levers snap back together into the V. This means they can’t go back through because they are now at the point of the V and can only push it more closed.The design seems fine. However, the levers need to be made of very lightweight plastic so that a bee can easily bend them back. This also means that even the smallest imperfection in the plastic lever can mean it won’t function like it should. My second picture is looking into the point of the V where the levers are touching as they should until some bee comes pushing through. (Reminds me of Miss Kitty’s old Wild West saloon doors from Gunsmoke). The third picture shows the levers on my second bee escape where, even though no bee is pushing through, the ends of the levers are not even close to being together. This means bees could easily go right back through. I tried bending the levers back into shape but didn’t have any success. This does not seem like damage that could happen in shipping but rather a lack of quality control. In my mind, this lesser quality, inexpensive product (or was mine just a fluke?) hurts the Little Giant name and makes me wonder if I should stay away from even their more expensive products??

This worked really fast. I have a booming hive, and I had surgery so I am getting to my honey supers late, so I was very happy that this little item worked. I glued it to a standard top board. It has screw holes, but I am going to use this top board just as an escape board. I have an apimay hive, and wanted to get the wooden super off so I can winterize my apimaye hive. I glued it to the top board, put it between the top brood box and the super with the round hole "facing" the super. about a day later i checked and there were just a couple of stubborn bees still in the super.

The product works, but in comparison to other manufacturers, the plastic will crack easily so be careful on where you store it. Not sure on price of others, but quality on this one is not the best.

I kept having problems with bees getting trapped above the frames and dying. I removed one the vents and replaced with this and now the bees can get out.