Feeding

It's spring so the bee's are flying and its time to feed like crazy for the main honey flow in April. I haven't bought any bee's this opting to build up what i have got or find wild ones and then re-queen if i have to. So this year its really important to feed constantly for the next few weeks.

I mix 4lbs of sugar and 4 litres of water to make my sugar water, the bee's devour it but the delivery of it as always been an issue for me. I have used various types of feeders and to be honest i haven't found one yet that i was 100% happy with. I some hive top feeders from Mann Lake.

I have three of these and drowning has been minimal my only complaint is the wire mesh.
After a season the wire mesh breaks down, not sure why but the following season you have to replace. This year i bit the bullet and ordered the replace meant mesh from Man Lake.

As you can see they are pretty corroded and i cant help but wonder what this did to my bee's. The replacements came in yesterday they are a few bucks a piece so i got a few spares cleaned the feeders up and swapped the mesh out.

The feeders are pretty good in that they can hold 4 gallons of sugar water , which for me normally lasts about a week max per hive. I have other types of feeder that i will comment on.

Brushy Mountain Bee Farm produce a plastic entrance feeder that's $3.25 each and holds about 1.3lts of sugar water. So far they have been pretty good and have survived being outside in heat and cold for a whole season. There are two things that i don't like about them. They encourage robbing. My friend Albert suggesting modifying my bottom boards so that they could be placed in the back which i haven't had time to do yet. Because of the fit of the bottom to the cup there is a capillary action which results in the bee's being able to feed on the outside further encouraging robing.

I have also noticed this year that the ones from last season the plastic has gone very hard and britle. I got some more this year so i will check on them and see if they fair any better.

I also have the internal black kind. So far there are a number of things i don't like about them. First they only fit in a deep so you have to take the hive apart to get to them and secondly they seem to drown a large number of bee's. I am interested in the new kind from Mann Lake with the Bee lander and might make something similar for mine to experiment with this year.