1gal pail feeder

I'm using one gallon pail feeders and Honey B Healthy purchased from P.N. Williams.  It's seems easier to make large batches of syrup and have two pail feeders per hive.

• bees take a few minutes to clear the pail feeder and if a pail feeder is left completely empty, then propolis may cover the pail feeder screen
• electrical tape helps line-up the pail feeder screen and inner cover hole
• inverting the pail feeder over a bucket helps control ant attracting spills

These bee packages have been fed continuously since May.  According to my counting board results, this has been my best year for controlling small hive beetles and varroa mites--this is also the first year with Lula Georgia bee packages and continuous feeding with Honey B Healthy. 

According to the official climate summary, this is a record setting warm summer which followed a prolonged winter--as always it seems difficult to apply the conventional rules of a normal beekeeping year when no two years have the same weather.  As I heard Malcolm T. Sanford says, "all bee keeping is local," meaning that continuous feeding may not work in your apiary.

2008 at-a-glance

2008 was filled with many bee experiences--some unexpected. Thoughts like "what have I got myself into" entered my mind more than a few times. Here are my 2008 beekeeping calendar highlights:

• 20-March: Two nucleus hives from P.N. Williams sit next to deep 8-frame hive bodies
• 8-April: Add second deep hive body to each hive, "Buda" and "Pest"
• 2-May: Bees pour out of "Buda" like rushing water. Captured a very small swarm on the shaded ground and create a new third hive, Kent, using a deep hive body.
• 12-May: Bees pour out of "Buda" again. Captured a medium sized swarm while standing on the neighbors roof. I have run-out of wooden ware, so I combine the new swarm with "Kent" which requires a week of using the queen exlcuder as a queen includer.
• week of 9-June & 16-June: volunteer at Oakhurst Community Garden's Beekeeping Camp; Curtis Gentry helps me label the interesting summer bee behaviour as washboarding
• 3-August: "Pest" is lost to small hive beetle (SHB) and robbing
• 17-August: "Kent" is abandoned and covered with SHB slime
• 15-September: "Buda" is abandoned and covered in-part with SHB slime