GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: beekeeping classes

Bucket Bee Feeder Video – Beekeeping 101
Here’s a homemade bucket bee feeder I made to feed the honeybees sugar syrup. Watch the video and then step through the photos below.

I like the bucket bee feeder because you can feed the bees sugar syrup in the early spring and fall without having to open up the beehive. Our other sugar feeder videos all involve opening up the hive to feed the bees. This doesn’t.

The downside is if the weather is wet or cold or both, the bees wont fly and can’t get to this feeder. So I will use a combination of hive sugar feeders and this outdoor feeder.

Couple of tips when making the bucket bee feeder:
- Be sure to buy a food grade bucket with a gasket ring that seals the lid.
- Don’t drill holes where the handles meet the bucket.
- Fewer holes might be better.
- The bucket must be level when inverted.
You may have to shop around to find a bucket with the support ring that we will use as the feeder. This ring is for a person to be able to handle the bucket better with their hands, but when the bucket is inverted, the spaces under the ring make for great sugar cups.

5/64″ holes

I found that a 5/64″ drill bit worked well for me. Several people have suggested, after watching the video, that fewer holes would keep the sugar syrup from overflowing as much when its first turned over. With fewer holes, one would drill or cut through the walls between the spaces to allow the syrup to fill the ring. I’ll have to experiment with this. Let me know if you do as well.

If you accidentally drill in to the ring cavity where there handle attaches to the bucket, like I did, you can glue the hole shut. Silicon caulk works, or some plastic glue.

When you first flip over the bucket, some syrup will pour out. It will slowly stop. If it doesn’t stop, the drilled holes are too big, or the gasket isn’t sealing.Be sure the bucket is level, or the syrup will flow out.

As suggested by a viewer, test this out with plain water first. I used a 1:1 sugar syrup solution with some essential oil mix added with the feeder. Here is a homemade essential oil mix. I now buy a commercial essential oil mix from a beekeeping supplier, its just easier for the small amount I use every year.
April 12, 2016
Feeding Honeybees Sugar Syrup, Zip Bag Method GF Video

When feeding bees sugar syrup, I have tried many methods, and I like the zipper bag method best. Here is another of our beginning beekeeping 101 videos, this one on how to feed bees sugar syrup.

I have tried various sugar feeders with some success, but it seems that most feeders drown bees also. My friend Rick Kennerly introduced me to this zipper bag sugar feeder method.

The advantage of many sugar feeders is that you don’t have to open the hive to add more sugar syrup. With the bag method, you do open the top of the hive, but its not much more work than filling up a sugar feeder. When the first bag of syrup is empty, I leave it on the top frames of the hive, and just lay another one on top if it. This keeps the bees from making too much burr comb in the space where the feeder sits. Its also less intrusive that way, you aren’t peeling off a bag every time you open the hive, you peel off all the bags when its time to stop feed sugar syrup.

You can add essential oils to the sugar syrup, we do. Here is a recipe for essential oil mix for honeybees, or you can buy it pre-mixed. Either works well.

You may have to experiment to find the best zipper style food bags. The store brand ones work fine for us. Transporting them when they are full can be tricky, I put them in a wide tray or bucket when I drive to the beeyard. You don’t want syrup spilling in your car or your yard, it creates bee chaos.

I fill up the bags by putting them in a metal pasta pot, with the opening spread over the top of the pot. Don’t fill it up all the way, or the bag will burst.

Here is our overview of how to overwinter honeybees, with all sorts of good info.
A video and information about sugarcakes, which you give the bees for winter:

January 31, 2015
Drone Laying Worker in a Queenless Hive

When we check our honeybee hives, we first just stand there and observe them. We could tell there was something wrong with one of the hives.

note the large drone cells scattered about

It was quiet, the hive next to it was buzzing with activity.

We opened it up to hear this odd low frequency hum in the hive, not something you usually hear. One look at a brood frame told us we had a bad problem on our hands.

The queen was dead.

And to make matters worse, one or more workers had started laying eggs in the cells, and since workers are infertile, all the eggs are drones.

Queenless hive, signs of the drone laying worker here

So how can a worker bee lay eggs? If a hive is queenless, her pheromone is absent, and a few of the workers can then begin lay eggs. It doesn’t happen everytime a hive loses queen, and this is the first time it has happened to us.

You can’t just put new queen in one of these hives, as the laying workers will kill the new queen. You have two choices, either combine the queenless hive with a healthy hive nearby, or get rid of the laying workers.

One of our Facebook fans explained how she did this:

Rhonda wrote: “Not good. I had this happen last year. I took the hive that had some young bees and some older bees in it and moved at about 2000′ away from the original location, dumped all the bees out onto the ground-every one of them, then took the hive body back to the original location. The younger, drone layers had not been out of the hive yet, so they could not find their way back home. I then transferred a queen cell from another hive into that hive and before long everything was good again. I know, it as a bit chancy, but the other options weren’t much better.”

Healthy frame of brood, note the curled up larvae.

The laying workers are nurse bees who have yet to leave the hive, so they have don’t know any outdoor landmarks or orientation to return to the hive. The older bees, who are foragers, know the location of the hive, so when dumped out of the hive, they will fly back to its location.

This hive was pretty weak, so I’m thinking right now i’ll combine it with the stronger hive next to it, and perhaps split the strong hive in week or two, with a new queen in the split. * we did the beehive combine, click here to see how to combine beehives

Have you dealt with a drone laying worker? Let us know below

April 19, 2012