Hi. I was looking at the hive top feeder, the one that has entrance in the middle with some kind of a metal mesh guard, does it really work, as for not drowning bees?
I bought a few of a Mann Lake top feeders built the way you describe. They weren't perfect, no feeder is, but they worked satisfactory in my opinion. Shortcomings with the ones I received were:
Less than perfect tolerances between the metal screen and the plastic feeder. This can allow bees to crawl thru the gap and get into open syrup. If that happens, a lot of bees do die. I caulked my screens in to fix that problem, but now it's almost impossible to clean out dead bees.
The metal screen pokes into the plastic and there are a couple places where the plastic is pretty thin. I never had any leaks, but I did worry about it.
There is a huge area under the feeder that doesn't obey bee space. This can result in a combed up mess if you leave the feeder on too long in the spring. I only use them in the fall, and the comb is not such an issue, but getting tons of bees out of all the crevices when you remove the feeder on a cold fall day is a problem.
Everything in bee keeping is a compromise in some regards. All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with my mann lake top feeders. All feeders are going to kill some bees, but this feeder didn't kill too many IMO. Not sure if that is the brand you're talking about, but your description sounds similar.