Bee Escape Review of Three Styles

We hope this bee escape review will help you narrow your choice of bee-escapes. To conduct this review we tested three different bee escapes this summer. Our hope was to find the best bee escape in this review. The ranking was based on ease of use and how quickly the bees cleared out of honey supers would be our two main results to evaluate. The cost was another, though a lower priority evaluation point of the three bee escapes. The cost was a lesser concern because we really were after the quickest and easiest way of getting bees out of our honey supers without out using smoke or aromatic repellents. We felt paying a little more for ease and quick and effective evacuation of bees was potentially worth the extra cost to us.

One note is that the two plastic versions do require that you use an inner cover with them. Since they do not come with one that is an added expense and time to install the escapes onto the inner cover. So if you do not have ones you wish to attach the bee escapes to, then you also need to buy new inner covers. Since we are working on replacing many of our well used inner covers this was not necessarily an unwelcome added cost.

The simplest way we found to attach escapes was to use screws. We used short four hex head screws on each one to attach them to the covers. This will allow us to remove the escapes should we need to replace them or the covers.

There are several sources for these bee escapes we used in our review. Many local bee supply equipment stores carry one or more of these styles.

Amazon is another source for all three and where we purchased the round style from. Mann Lake is where we sourced the diamond-shaped style. That style is also available from Amazon but we found the pricing direct from Mann Lake to be a better deal. Ultimately, we purchased all of the woodenware and the diamond-shaped escapes from Mann Lake. Shipping is free if your qualifying order is over $100.

I would love to say we did a very scientific study of the effectiveness of the bee escapes. You know, one of those studies with a control subject and then several test subjects. Nope, not this time. Purely an observational evaluation of how well each escape worked compared to the others. So how did we do it you ask? We had three hives all set up next to each other. Each hive had visually about the same number of bees in each super on top of the hives. This was based on the number of bees covering the top of each super when the inner cover was removed. We then placed the bee escapes under the top super on each hive and closed the hives back up. So the three hives each got a different style of escape.

We visited the hives two, four and ten days after installation and checked to see how many bees were in each super. At the two day mark, we really could not see any significant differences between the three hives. On day four it was clear two of the three escapes were showing progress in clearing out the supers. The day ten inspection led to similar observations. One bee escape, the round one clearly was not getting the job done. There were fewer bees in the super but at this rate, it likely would have taken another month to clear out the bees. The other two escapes had pretty similar results. The wooden triangular “maze” style seems to be the most successful is clearing bees from the super. However, the diamond-shaped plastic escape showed results that were close to the wooden one. Since our analysis was based purely on observational inspections (read no complete bee count) we cannot declare a true winner. Both styles seem to be effective in helping to clear bees from the supers.

At the end of our evaluation, it was clear we could not declare a winner in this bee escape review. Both the wooden “maze” and the plastic diamond seem to work well. In the equal time being on the hive, both styles showed similar results in clearing bees from the supers. The diamond shape ones did require installing them on an inner cover using short screws. That did take some time and add a little complexity to their use. And also increased the base cost of the escape since we purchased new inner covers to go with them. The wooden “maze” style came ready to use right out of the box.

As for the round plastic one? Now that is a different story. I guess I have five “Frisbees” to use next spring when the weather dries out. Maybe they work well for others but our experience was disappointing when compared to the other two bee escapes in our review. Add to that the need to install them on an inner cover and we do not think we will be adding more of these to our hive equipment inventory.

Here is our ranking:

In the end, it comes down to personal opinion and preference as to which is best suited for your use. We would recommend either the wooden “maze” style or the diamond-shaped plastic one. The round one, though pretty cheap, was simply to slow and clearing the bees from the super for our needs. For us, we will continue to use both the plastic diamond escapes as well as the wooden “maze” style.

If you use bee escapes what is your preference and experience? You can share your experiences below or head over to Facebook and comment on this post on our page or in our Facebook group.