UGH! Top feeder question again ~

[Flygirl]

Hi everyone ~

I have two styrofoam topfeeders.  The kind with the plastic insert so you can see the bees as they crawl up, over & then down to get to the syrup. 

The bees in one hive are eating like crazy & the plastic channel is filled with bees.  No drowning bees ~ no problem.

In my second hive there's always only been a few bees feeding...and then they drown.  So there's always a row of dead bees plugging up the syrup.  Every other day I'm scooping out the dead bodies
:(  Do you think they can't crawl back up the plastic or foam?  I did do a search on this site & someone recommended using a blade to rough up the plastic so they could grip the surface.  I didn't do it on the other feeder but maybe these girls need a little extra help?

These feeders are exactly the same.  What's up with this?  It's been interesting to compare the two hives but when one seems like they're not eating it brings out the grandma in me....eat darlings!!!

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions.  Flygirl

[bzzzybee]

We have two hives, side by side, same type of bees from the same beek source, put in at the same time. One hive takes the syrup like there's no tomorrow, and the other one won't touch the stuff. As a result the greedy hive, which had many fewer bees when we hived them, has now nearly caught up in population with the picky, but initially more populous hive.

Who's to say why they do what they do? We continue to feed them both, with the goal being lovely boxes filled with drawn comb. We change the baggies at the same time...when the greedy hive has emptied theirs, hopefully thus ensuring that the syrup is never stale in the picky hive.

- bzzzy

[Flygirl]

Yep....they are very individual, aren't they?  I just don't know why they keep drowning?  That's what I'm most concerned about.  There's a whole row of them at the bottom blocking the syrup & maybe only a couple others inside the plastic thingy.  I'm worried there was something wrong with styrofoam or it wasn't clean  ~ but I did clean it before I filled it & put it on the hive.   FG

[Shizzell]

FG,

Welcome =)

Often I tell people that the bees get too fat and they don't have enough friction to climb up the slippery slope that is verticle. ESPECIALLY when the plastic is new. My solution, I take a sharp nail (as in wood nail), and start scratching very large chunks of plastic out of the plastic almost like a ladder across both sides of the feeder. Then, they have something to grab onto when climbing out of it.

After I did that my first year, I had zero dead bees on the bottom every time I used the top feeder.

Jake