1 gallon bucket feeders for bees offer an affordable and simple solution to feed your hive, being easy to use, monitor, refill and rob less often than other types of feeders.
Frame feeders can be constructed out of wood or plastic and come in all kinds of styles and materials. Smooth plastic frames may drown bees more quickly; rough sides or #8 hardware cloth ladders tend to work more effectively as bee feeders.
Contents
Product Description
Pail feeders feature an embedded stainless steel feeder screen and plug to access their contents, and should be filled close to the top with sugar syrup, slowly inverted, creating a vacuum effect, which attracts bees for feeding purposes. This technique is particularly popular during spring feeding season but should also be employed throughout the year; to protect itself against potential robbers it should ideally be placed inside an empty hive body or on top of frames or over the hole in inner cover for optimal use.
This type of feeder offers several distinct advantages for northern climates where new package colonies need extra support in harsher climate conditions, but also exposes their feed more readily to elements, leading to faster spoilage rates that necessitate frequent refilling sessions.
Product Features
These food grade plastic buckets feature an inlaid stainless steel feeder screen for feeding sugar syrup to a feeding pump and an easily removable tint plug.
Pail feeders are one of the most effective means of providing bees with food during spring and fall when their nectar needs necessitate syrup build-up. Simply fill your bucket with syrup and invert it over your inner cover entrance hole; bees will access their feed through mesh feeder screens or holes or tint plugs on lids or tint plugs on lids to access their meals.
Another advantage of a feeder of this kind is that it can be used to feed young packages or weaker colonies, though care must be taken that it is placed away from other hives or wasp nests, where robbers cannot easily gain access. Furthermore, feeding should take place in an area where bees can perform cleansing flights during warm weather.
Product Options
These pail feeders, also referred to as hive-top feeders, contact feeders or syrup cans, use gravity with an airtight seal to provide bees inside their hives with access to syrup directly. Equipped with an embedded stainless steel feeder screen for 1:1 syrup fillings and with an airtight seal ensuring airtight delivery, the container is slowly inverted onto either the top of a hive or through holes in its inner cover allowing bees to access it directly.
Pail feeders are simple to use and allow bees direct access to sugar water, making them preferable to frame feeders that require them to traverse frames to get at it. Also, by restricting access from just one hive at once only those from that hive will accessing it – unlike open air feeders which attract bees from neighboring colonies as well as wasps, robbers, predators or predators that might cause weaker colonies to be victimized by robbing. These feeders come in either 1 gallon or 2 gallon capacities to make choosing which best suits you and your colony best! The feeders come either 1 gallon capacity or 2 gall capacity models available as options.
Product Instructions
Pail feeders provide an easy and straightforward method of providing sugar syrup directly above a cluster of bees in a hive, making them particularly helpful during spring build-up or when feeding a newly installed package.
Like other gravity style hive top feeders, pail feeders use gravity and vacuum pressure to deliver syrup to bees without opening their hives. However, unlike their counterparts with holes in their lids, bucket feeders have stainless screen melted directly into their lids for improved bee nutrition.
Fill a bucket with syrup and then slowly invert it over your hive, positioning the opening in its inner cover to position it over it. Secure an empty hive body around it before covering with outer cover to deter robbers from accessing it directly. Place this feeder away from other colonies (to reduce chances of other colonies taking your syrup) as well as where it will be protected from rain and snow.
