Three Warre Hives
Who would have guessed? Feeding honey bees…. well, now that I’ve been keeping bees for all of a few months, I can see the need, at least in the beginning. They have no reserves from the previous year in their new hive and the nectar wasn’t flowing when they were installed in the early spring.
So I had tried quail feeders at first but the bees drank the honey too fast to make it worth while. Then I moved to the 3 gallon chicken waterers because I happened to have some lying around. That was better size-wise, but when the level got too low the bees would crawl into the reservoir and drown. So, just to last the next few weeks, I took the container off and left just the dish filled with wood shavings so the bees had something to stand on while drinking. Very few drowned bees, but not so good in the rain for obvious reasons.
Honeybees Feeding on Sugar Water
But, good golly, Miss Molly!! They suck up the sugar-water like there is no tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many bags of sugar I’ve bought.. the 25 lb bags. I haven’t looked in the hives since the last time I wrote about them, but I’m wondering if I need to add another box to the Warre hive for all the sugar they are consuming. So on goes the bee suit, minus one glove that the dogs ate. Just call me the Michael Jackson of beekeepers. One of my English Shepherds, Cinnamon, gives me a look, that I swear, says very clearly, “WTF?!?! You look like a moron.” Yeah, well, who ate the freakin’ glove, Missy?!?! PHRUMPF! I know she means the suit with the mesh headgear, not the missing glove, but I have to defend myself somehow…. We part ways in the middle field.
For the future, I found a site that builds Warre Hives and they also have neat top feeders that I plan to get to make it easier to feed the bees… for the rest of the year, it seems. PIGS!!! The website, by the way, is appropriately called The Warre Store . ( The hives pictured here are by a local guy in the Portland area.)
Busy Honeybees Entering the Hive