My bees love me. I give them a nice place to live. I provide water. I try not to bother them too much. They have this really cool feeder on top that sometimes has water and sometimes a special treat like honey water. They have to love me…. right?
Well, not if I’m killing them! I thought I was giving them a treat by putting the honey water in the top feeder. This honey water was left overs from our first honey extraction. We boiled the crushed comb to melt the wax. The water that was left over was just deliciously sweet so as not to waste it I poured it into the top feeder.
Now stick with me for a minute to follow my thought process. See… before I added the honey water I was propping up the back of the cover so there would be some extra ventilation in the hive. It’s hot here so I thought that would be nice. Well, the day after I added the honey water I went out to see how things were going. and I found a top feeder full of dead bees. Oh NO!!
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| Top Feeder with dead bees. |
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| Top Feeder with dead bees. |
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| Bees inside even after closing cover? |
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| Bees inside even after closing cover? |
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| Propped Top Cover for Ventilation. |
I’d love your feedback. What are your experiences with Top Feeders? Are they too risky? Is mine just faulty?
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Friend, I know that this is an older blog post, but I have the exact same feeder as you use. To solve the problem of drowning bees, I caulked the edges of the screen so that they can’t get around it.
This entailed removing the screens, roughing up the screen-to-plastic area with coarse sandpaper to give the caulk a good bonding surface, reassembling, and applying the silicone caulk. It solved the problem. I do find it quite objectionable that the parts sellers either do not do this or do not include a directive to do this.
Kind regards,
Harry
I know you’re post is really old, but if you put lots of bits (blocks) of wood in the syrup part they will have something to cling to and not drown. Hope this helps! Bee blessed!