Author Topic: my feeders i made out of things around the house (Read 10862 times)

mamapoppybee · « **on:** May 25, 2014, 05:50:49 pm »

my free to cheep bee feeders i made this weekend. they work pretty well.

Beeboy · « **Reply #1 on:** May 25, 2014, 06:24:11 pm »

Very neat! Are you in the Tulsa area? I'm just southwest of there, close to sapulpa if you know where that's at. I like to see how other beeks in my area are doing compared to what I'm seeing.

How far away are the feeders from your hives?

Jen · « **Reply #2 on:** May 25, 2014, 08:02:22 pm »

Nice! Now you have my creative mind going

Nice to hear from you Mama

riverbee · « **Reply #3 on:** May 25, 2014, 11:56:29 pm »

how cool are those!!!

i think i see your hive in the background on the first pic? thanks for the pictures, and also checking back in here, haven't heard from you in awhile, and was really wondering how you were doing!

Bakersdozen · « **Reply #4 on:** May 26, 2014, 10:11:58 am »

Two thumbs up! Glad to see one of us girls getting creative. The guys can't have all the fun!

Slowmodem · « **Reply #5 on:** May 26, 2014, 04:03:03 pm »

Necessity is the mother of invention (well, Frank Zappa had the Mothers of Invention, too). That's a neat, practical feeder. It should work well. Beware the wood may swell and the lids will be hard to get out of it. You may need to sand the holes to make them slightly bigger if that happens.

mamapoppybee · « **Reply #6 on:** May 26, 2014, 08:56:24 pm »

the neck of the jars is resting on whole because they are slighty bigger.

ty for trying to save me head ache

Slowmodem · « **Reply #7 on:** May 26, 2014, 09:09:46 pm »

This is the one I got from WT Kelly. I learned about the swelling because I need to sand the holes in mine!

CpnObvious · « **Reply #8 on:** May 26, 2014, 09:24:39 pm »

Great topic and great ideas!

Maybe this could be moved to the "Do-It-Yourself Plans and Prints" Topic for easier searching?

riverbee · « **Reply #9 on:** May 26, 2014, 10:37:33 pm »

done! great suggestion, great thread mpb, iddee beat me to it!!! (moving the thread).....

blueblood · « **Reply #10 on:** December 25, 2014, 06:53:12 pm »

I like that idea! I am leaning toward a community feeder versus each hive being fed individually. Personally, I don't have the patience or time to mess with feeders for each hive.

Yankee11 · « **Reply #11 on:** December 25, 2014, 10:52:35 pm »

Heres one I'm trying out. 5 gallons a a time and hardly any drowning bees. So far so good.

2 hrs later

blueblood · « **Reply #12 on:** December 25, 2014, 11:01:05 pm »

Nice! I will follow how that works out for you. I may adopt that. The fear I have had about mass feeding is the result I saw the only time I left an extractor at my back door for the bees to clean off. There was thousands of dead bees everywhere!

Yankee11 · « **Reply #13 on:** December 25, 2014, 11:11:39 pm »

Yea, been there.

They have emptied this 4 times now. so outta 15 to 20 gallons probably only drowned a hand full of bees. I started with just one hole drilled in each
compartment then I drilled 3 in each compartment.

I fill it with sugar, boils some water and pour the water in the bucket and stir. Put lid on and flip over. Only draw back is that its heavy to flip over. Other than that I like it so far.

Yankee11 · « **Reply #14 on:** December 25, 2014, 11:45:32 pm »

Moma,

Let us know how yours work also. Could do some 1/2 gallon jars or even 1 gallon jars.

kebee · « **Reply #15 on:** December 26, 2014, 06:47:27 am »

I would love to feed that way but I would also be feeding every bug you could name at the same time for I don't think they ever go away around here even when it gets below freezeing.

Ken

Yankee11 · « **Reply #16 on:** December 26, 2014, 08:54:06 am »

yea, i did feed a few yellow jackets and hornets.

riverbee · « **Reply #17 on:** December 26, 2014, 09:12:14 am »

lol, like ken i couldn't get away with that method, the big furry black critters we have running around would really like those 5 gallon pails...........

Slowmodem · « **Reply #18 on:** December 27, 2014, 12:34:31 pm »

Quote from: blueblood on December 25, 2014, 11:01:05 pm

Nice! I will follow how that works out for you. I may adopt that. The fear I have had about mass feeding is the result I saw the only time I left an extractor at my back door for the bees to clean off. There was thousands of dead bees everywhere!

I have a community feeder with a capacity of 6 jars and I never have dead bees. Sometimes in the fall, yellow jackets show up though. But there's so many bees, they never notice the YJs.

(there's a picture of the feeder posted around here somewhere)

blueblood · « **Reply #19 on:** December 27, 2014, 10:13:51 pm »

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether distance from hive yard to community feeder would reduce the probability of learned robbing behavior?

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