The reason for trying it this way is because I have always fed by having a mason jar, with multiple holes through the lid, stuck down through the top cover. However, where I lived before in Alabama I didn't have many wild colonies of bees so only my bees benefited. I also didn't experience much robbing because each hive had its own source of feed in their top cover. When I moved to Kentucky, there must be quite a few wild colonies here because as soon as I put in my first hive, I had a ton of bees show up, all trying to get into the hive opening to get to the feed. That's my reason for wanting to move the feeding away from the hive.
I have seen the 5 gallon feeders but because of how my yard is laid out and because my grandkids like to play all over the yard, I really didn't have a great place to put a single large feeder because I knew it would attract a very large number of bees (mine and the wild ones) and didn't want my grand kids having to deal with that. So I elected to hang 5 or 6 small feeders about head high from tree limbs on the edge of my property. This gives the bees multiple places to feed from and doesn't create a large buzzing frenzy of activity at one place. Its also off the ground so no ants so far...
I know its more work keeping several small feeders going but I would have had to do this anyway with my top feeders and this is way less obtrusive than pulling a feeder out of the top of the hive. Since putting it in, the bee frenzy at the opening of the hive has gone back to normal. The experiment was seeing if multiple small feeders in various locations would still feed them the same amount of syrup that they were getting from the tops feeders. So far so good...
Topic: Feeder Experiment (Read 2536 times)