With about a month or so before I get my packages of bees. I am wrapping up on building out the site for the bees. Two areas were constructed, about 70 feet from each other. The sugar water feeders will give the bees what they need until the nectar flow really kicks in. With 15 gallons it should keep them happy though I may need to refill them pretty often.
I decided to leave the cinder blocks stacked vertically for the feeders, but for the bee hives I rearranged them to be placed horizontally. They seem pretty stable up there, but time will tell when we get some strong storms through the area.
I had one Hive sticker left so added it to the center sugar water feeder. These food safe 5 gallon buckets have holes drilled all around the bucket and will let sugar water seep out and the bees can land and feed on it.
Since there are no bees yet, I left them empty and placed some rocks on top to keep them from blowing over.
I later found an old 2x4 I was using for leveling and added it to the top to better distribute the weight. Once these buckets are full of sugar water they will not need any weights on top to hold them in place.
Cant wait to see all the bees gathering on the buckets in the early spring to feed on the sugar water. They will also have top feeders on the bee hives though the capacity is much smaller than these buckets. So these 5 gallon buckets will act as auxiliary food for the bees.
The buckets have a screw on lid added to them, that was recommended by some bee keepers as the snap top lids may leak after awhile being upside down, allowing all the sugar water to just pool under the cinderblocks and 4x4s. That would probably attract ants so want to keep it suspended up high. And if ants do find a way up the cinderblocks I plan on adding tanglefoot to keep them from getting to the buckets.
Bee hives should be placed far away from the feeders, this is due to how the bees communicate with each other. They do a "waggle dance" to tell other bees where the food is. And if its too close to the hive they cannot express this very well causing issues for the bees to find the feeders. So I placed these sugar water feeder buckets about 70 feet away from the bee hives. Hopefully it will be enough to keep them from getting confused.