This is the top feeder. You can kind of see the bees drinking the sugar syrup there under the screen.
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| Matt's busy bees |
If you look closely, you can see pollen stored in some of the cells, (the yellowish looking ones), and the little larvae curled up in some of the honey comb cells. It takes seven days between when the egg is laid and when the cell is capped with wax to let the larva grow through it's pupal stage and undergo metamorphasis into an adult bee.
It's a baby bee nursery!
1 gallon top feeders are our preference with our bees. They keep the bees well fed but the bees don't make any burr comb. Fill it with sugar syrup, seal it well, hold it upside down until the vacuum seal takes hold and the syrup stops dripping out (do this away from the hive to prevent robbing), and place on top of the inner cover hole. Cover the feeder with a deep super and the outer cover. Check it every week and keep an extra feeder available per hive. Have the extra feeder filled and ready to go when the current one runs out. We use the feeders to encourage the bees to drawn out new foundation but once they have drawn it out and a honey flow starts, we remove them because we don't want them to store the syrup on the supers. We want the real deal! Nectar from flowers and then the capped honey! :)
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