We put one on each hive. A couple of days later, they both had a lot of bees in the syrup. Many had drowned, and some were flying around inside. I didn't know how they got in to the syrup. It's screened off and seemed to work well last year.
As a stop-gap measure, I put the Brushy Mountain top feeder on the 10-frame hive and filled it with syrup. They don't make that kind of feeder for 8-frame (I sure wish they did!), so I went back to the entrance feeders on top of an inner cover with a box around them.
Tuesday, I got a silicone-calk-type of tube gun and ran a bead of silicone around the screen edges, hopefully sealing the route the bees were taking into the syrup. I put one on the 8-frame hive to test it and to make sure the silicone wasn't harmful to bees.
This also shows the neat new cart I got to pull boxes and frames from the hives to the shed.
I had this problem, too. It still happened after I had siliconed the screen edges and I discovered it was a warped top. I made a gasket out of some foam, which temporarily solved it. Then I switched tops around until I found one that sealed the feeder off better.
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem, too I used the Brushy Mountain top feeders and lost a lot of bees. I have removed all them off my 10 frame hives. I will not use them again the bees built wax all over the inside of the box. The Queen got up there and I killed her when I removed the first one, so I to am going back to a front feeder.
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