feeder

[beegee]

I recently bought a Candibox feeder. It's a rectangular plastic tub that sits in the deep. You put two frames of foundation in it, fill with syrup. It holds 2 gallons. my bees went through 5 quarts quarts of 1:1 syrup in two days. I just filled again with 2 gallons. It seems OK, no drowned bees, but I really don't like having to crack the hive open every couple of days to fill this thing. I was wondering if I could drill a 3/4" hole above the thing, use a vunyl tube and funnel left in place to fill it? Has anyone else tried these things?

[Michael Bush]

How would you know when it was full?

[Michael Bush]

My favorite feeder is from the beeworks and is here: http://www.beeworks.com/uspage5.asp it's the "Rapid Feeder". It goes over the hole in the inner cover. You put an empty super around it and the lid on top. You can fill it without opening the hive and without facing any bees. Other options that provide the same advantage, but hold more or less syrup are the hive top feeders (miller feeders) and putting a #8 mesh screened hole the size of a boardman feeder in the inner cover. The hive top feeders are hard to remove when you DO want to open the hive without spilling them. They slosh a lot. But they hold a lot of syrup and if you get the kind that are screened or make a screen they can be filled without facing bees. The ones from www.bee-commerce.com have the screen. The ones from Brushy Mt. don't, but it's easy to add the screen. The plans on here are easily screened.

I like being able to fill a feeder without having to even put on a veil, let alone open the hive.

[Russ]

I built some of the Miller type feeders and I found out after using one of them the first time to be sure to run a bead of silicone calk along the edge of the 1/8" hail screen at the ends and also 2 or 3 places across the bottom where the wire meets the bottom of the feeder. What I think happened is the feeder got empty and the bees forced the wire up enough off the bottom to get over into the feeder and died. I have since used the feeder after sealing the ends of the wire and the bottom and no DEAD BEES.