Feeding the bees

Someone asked me how I feed the bees in a top bar hive.  Usually, the rule of thumb is to not feed them unless you have to.  My colony got a late start and now there isn't much of a nectar flow, so I need to feed the colony to make sure it is populated enough and has enough food stored for the winter.

So this is how I do it.  First I take the cover off.

The cover isn't really part of the hive.  It just keeps the top of the hive safe from the elements.  The top bars themselves make up the top of the hive.

Since I started with plastic frames, I laid the top bars that were in their place upside down on top of them.  Langstroth frames aren't made to touch each other and leave beespace between them, so the upside down bars cover up some of the space.  If you look closely you can see the bees putting propolis in the gaps to try to seal them up.

I know since I've been feeding them that they haven't started building on bars 12-15 yet, so I can remove them and lay them to the side.  The "F" bar is the follower board.

Some people use an upside down mason jar to feed their bees.  Since we started some chickens from day-old chicks, I had a chick waterer that I could use.

So far I haven't had to use any gear when I refill the jar.  Some people think the bees are calmer since I am only exposing part of the hive at once instead of taking off the lid right over the frames with a Langstroth hive.  I expect that is probably true since you can see there aren't many bees at this end of the hive.  You can see below that there really are a lot of bees in the hive.  That's through the observation window.

After I take the jar out of the hive, I dump out the sticks and knock off any bees that are still hanging around.  Then I refill it and put the base back on.

I put sticks in the base because the first time I used it, a couple bees drowned.  None have died since I started using the sticks.

The last thing to do is to put it back in the hive and close it up.  I set it right on the screened bottom.

I've been using three cups of water and three cups of sugar (1:1) with 3/4 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  The vinegar is supposed to lower the pH of the solution (Nosema spores like a higher pH) and the acid in the vinegar breaks the sucrose down into fructose and glucose, more like nectar.  The bees are still pulling in a lot of pollen so I know they have a good protein source, too.

Well, that's all there is to it.  This amount lasts about two days.  They are never through with it in one day and they are always through with it in two days.