I have been doing more reading about entrance feeders for my hives. External feeders are something you use to feed sugar water to bees. There are several ways to do this. The easiest way is with entrance feeders or ‘Boardman’ feeders.

There are pros and cons to everything with this new hobby. With the Boardman feeders you just fill up the mason type jar with the liquid and place it upside down on the feeder. It’s a little messy because some of the sugar water leaks out and attracts bees, creating a ‘robbing’ situation, where other bees come in and steal the sugar water. I guess this is a big problem because you don’t know how much your bees are eating. Besides, where do the little robber bees get their little robber masks to yell “This is a stick up! NoBEEdy move!” (I couldn’t help it)

I was replacing the sugar water about every 4 days with Queen Latifa’s family eating more and always running dry by the time I replaced it. Queen Annie was close behind but never running dry within that time frame. Since I moved the feeders, it’s too early to tell if this is an improvement. I know it has cut down on robbing unless these bandit bees are dressing up in disguises to pass off as my bees to travel through the entire hive for the free treat. They might as well fly down the road and get their own! I do have an ant problem now that I didn’t notice before. There’s a ton of them in Queen Latifa’s hive and none in Queen Annie’s. Heck, who knows? The ants could be eating all the sugar water and I’m blaming it on Queen Latifa. Too early to judge.

New location for my external feeder; Inside the hive