Hive top feeders are an efficient and safe way to feed colonies. Their design allows you to easily refill large volumes of syrup quickly while their galvanized steel safety screen keeps bees from drowning.
These covers rest atop your inner cover and align directly with the entrance hole, making them easy to monitor while also decreasing potential theft opportunities.
Contents
Easy to Refill
One of the great features of hive top feeders is that they can easily be filled without opening your hive and risking exposure to flying bees. This enables faster delivery of syrup for colony feedings.
Our Hive Top Feeder can accommodate 8 and 10-frame Langstroth hives with ease. Crafted from single piece of polystyrene for optimal durability, its large 3-gall capacity makes this horizontal design safe from bee-fall into syrup.
Bees enter their feeder through a hole in the center of its inner cover, then travel up an inclined cone ridged with ridges where they can reach syrup inside. This design limits access to all reservoirs, reducing drowning risks significantly while remaining durable and easy to maintain.
Prevents Drowning
Hive top feeders are installed above the inner cover. Bees access the feeder through an opening in its interior cover, traveling along an ascending cone of ridges to reach their nectar source – these ridges allow bees to grip the feeder more securely and avoid falling off of its sides.
This type of feeder works well in warm weather and helps reduce robbing. However, it may be challenging to meet a hungry colony’s needs as refills must be performed multiple times daily and there can be fermentation-resulting in moldy sticky build-up in the feeder itself.
Boardman feeders employ a small-mouth mason jar filled with food that sits above the entrance of a hive to deliver feed quickly and conveniently, but may become dangerous should too many bees become upset, or should any parts break off of it. They’re quick to refill but not suitable for cold weather and robbers may clog their entranceway.
Easy to Clean
One of the advantages of this type of feeder is that it can easily be refilled without upsetting the hive, while also being easily cleaned. A stainless steel safety screen helps prevent bees from falling into its syrup reservoir and drowning.
Frame feeders (or division board feeders) replace one of the frames in a Langstroth hive and include an integrated float to protect bees from drowning. They’re easy to keep clean, can quickly be inspected at a glance by simply sliding over an empty hive box, and make for efficient use of space in an otherwise cramped environment.
Pail feeders are easy to fill and transport, yet hold less honey than their frame counterparts. Refills can be done by simply sliding off their inner cover. They should be placed over a medium super to protect from weather, animals and robbing robbing as well as monitor syrup levels more easily – a great choice for new beekeepers who may lack experience feeding their hive(s).
Easy to Transport
Hive top feeders provide an obvious advantage over pail feeders which must be unhooked from each colony and placed into new containers for transport every time they need replenishing.
The Ultimate Hive Feeder can fit inside either a medium 10-frame or shallow 8 frame hive and sits atop its inner cover, with its telescoping design enabling easy feeding without opening your hive. It features a large feeding area protected by a Plexiglas panel to prevent drowning bees; and its center cup serves as an accessible ladder so they can access syrup.
It comes equipped with an easy-to-fill and transport pan that makes filling, cleaning and transport simple, ideal for holding syrup, pollen substitute or dry sugar. Plus, its unique float system prevents bees from drowning! Using it is effortless compared to division board feeders which must be installed into the hive by replacing one frame at a time.
