Over-wintering with the feeder on

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maddydog

Drone Bee
Joined
Mar 24, 2013
Messages
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Location
north staffordshire
Hive Type
14x12
Number of Hives
150+ nucs and hives
Ran a little experiment over winter by leaving the 'english style' feeder on 50 colonies. I used an eke with plenty of insulation and the hives are poly with a small square of mess in the floor.
Checked them all properly yesterday and the water in the feeder varied from 0 to around 10mm deep. The underside of the crownboards were bone-dry. Normally I would see the odd crownboard with damp around the periphery - basically related to cluster/colony size.
Pretty much all of my colonies are booming this year with extraordinarily (for me) low winter losses. This is probably more to do with the relatively mild winter and a honed varroa strategy but thought I'd post anyway.
 
Ashforth box feeders work even better and I leave them on all year. Saves carting about and storage, and acts as a crownboard.

Saw the idea on Murray McGregor's Twitter a few years ago, and Laurence at Black Mountain Honey uses the method as well.

A poly box feeder is a reasonably good insulator, can be turned over to feed fondant on a QX, and even act as a split board.

Abelo picked up on it and sell it as an alternative package, with a feeder and no crownboard.
 
Ashforth box feeders work even better and I leave them on all year. Saves carting about and storage, and acts as a crownboard.

Saw the idea on Murray McGregor's Twitter a few years ago, and Laurence at Black Mountain Honey uses the method as well.

A poly box feeder is a reasonably good insulator, can be turned over to feed fondant on a QX, and even act as a split board.

Abelo picked up on it and sell it as an alternative package, with a feeder and no crownboard.

I agree, I've 20 of the Swienty poly feeders. I'd happily swap over to them or something similar but the cost is prohibitive.....
 

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