Feeding station

bee-nuts · April 13, 2010, 12:32:58 AM

Today I went through the hive that was weak and robbed blind. I left the candy board that had sugar left in it on a bottom board, put an inner cover and teliscoping cover on it and left it for the bees. Then I thought, well why not put a box back on and put a couple frame feeders in it and use the old hive for a feeding station which I did. I had two gallons of syrup left from last year so I did not want to start feeding hives only to run out. So now Im wondering if this is possibly a way to feed instead of an open barrel. One could put six or seven frame feeders per box and even stack them.

What do you think?

bee-nuts · April 13, 2010, 01:35:26 AM

I just heard on this video Feeding the Bees that you should not use beet sugar because it causes diarea in the bees and they will poop to death.

This guy does not know what he is talking about does he? When you go to walmart or where ever, as long as it is granulated sugar you are fine are you not?

AllenF · April 13, 2010, 07:37:52 PM

I use walmart sugar. And a quote from Michael Bush on another post

" From this USDA study on feeding bees:
http://www.beesource.com/pov/usda/abjfeb1977.htm
"Refined beet and cane sugar are pure sucrose and, of course, are safe and nutritionally equivalent. Unrefined sugars have poisoned bees. The toxic factors in molasses and in brown sugars have not been identified. Bailey (1966) found that semi-refined cane sugar was harmless but that semi-refined beet sugar decreased the life of bees. So, impurities in his unrefined beet sugar must be toxic. Crude beet sugar may be toxic because of pectins or galactosides in it (Barker, 1976a). Bailey also found that 8-year-old honey had dysenteric effects much like poisonous sugars: an absorption peak matching hydroxymethyl furfural correlated with toxicity of old honey and of acid-hydrolyzed syrups. Recent tests (Jachimowicz and El Sherbiny 1975; Barker 197Gb) show that hydroxymethyl furfural can be toxic when fed in glucose plus fructose at dosages found in some samples of acid-hydrolyzed or heated syrup and old or heated honey.""

I trust him. It is ok to feed it to them.

morb · April 13, 2010, 08:09:04 PM

He also says to add thyme and a camomile tea bag to help fight varroa, is there anything to this?

AllenF · April 13, 2010, 08:26:36 PM

Where did you read about adding that to the syrup?

morb · April 13, 2010, 11:05:50 PM

he mentions it in the video

Jim134 · April 14, 2010, 07:09:35 AM

Quote from: bee-nuts on April 13, 2010, 12:32:58 AM
Today I went through the hive that was weak and robbed blind. I left the candy board that had sugar left in it on a bottom board, put an inner cover and teliscoping cover on it and left it for the bees. Then I thought, well why not put a box back on and put a couple frame feeders in it and use the old hive for a feeding station which I did. I had two gallons of syrup left from last year so I did not want to start feeding hives only to run out. So now Im wondering if this is possibly a way to feed instead of an open barrel. One could put six or seven frame feeders per box and even stack them.

What do you think?

Looks more like a robbeding station to me :-D

BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)

AllenF · April 15, 2010, 12:02:25 AM

Would using a hive box as a feeder cause a robbing freenzy with the other hives after the bees get trained to rob? You would end up with 1 giant hive and a bunch of dead ones by the end of the season. What does everybody else think?

Kathyp · April 15, 2010, 12:08:32 AM

honeybee robbing is probably less an issue than the other robbers you'll attract. i do open feeding, but only until i see the first yellowjacket. hopefully i'm done feeding by then anyway.

bee-nuts · April 15, 2010, 01:07:18 AM

Quote from: AllenF on April 15, 2010, 12:02:25 AM
Would using a hive box as a feeder cause a robbing freenzy with the other hives after the bees get trained to rob? You would end up with 1 giant hive and a bunch of dead ones by the end of the season. What does everybody else think?

I kind of wondered this my self but from my experience, robbing does not turn into a problem unless you screw up like I have and leave more space open than they can defend like leaving Popsicle sticks under the inner cover when you use a bee escape. Or reverse boxes only to realize the next day that the bottom box now the top box was rotting out on the bottom leaving a 8 inch gap between boxes for less than a frame of bees to defend. I should not have temps above 80 for some time so I have my entrances at 3/4 inch squared. Im also thinking an early swarm will move right in.

No wasps or hornets here yet. Not sure when they dirty suckers arrive.