Top feeder bee escape setup

[nikki watts]

View attachment 137

Busy as bees .... spinning honey.... it comes out nicely in the 26c heat

It's a beautiful brew ..... West Coast Kamahi without the quintinia bitters, so probably has a crossover with some Lotus and Rata.

hi james
we tried your suggestion of using the top feeder as a bee escape. It worked really well. some boxes we haven’t even had to blow the bees out, just straight on the truck. I have a permaculture dislike of escape boards doing nothing for the rest of the year so we usually blow the bees out but when we leave harvest until this late in the the season robbing is a huge issue. your way when we took the honey off it was not drama and super quick. thanks

 

[James]

hi james
we tried your suggestion of using the top feeder as a bee escape. It worked really well. some boxes we haven’t even had to blow the bees out, just straight on the truck. I have a permaculture dislike of escape boards doing nothing for the rest of the year so we usually blow the bees out but when we leave harvest until this late in the the season robbing is a huge issue. your way when we took the honey off it was not drama and super quick. thanks

Nice.
The feeder escape hasn't worked so well so far this year for us. The flow is so intense the bees have filled the empty box below in a couple of days and gone on up into the boxes above ..... so we've had to blow, which is slower but no robbing ..... just a noisy job.
Who wants it ..... good question bighands ...... Lester might take a bit !

 

[bighands]

Nice.
The feeder escape hasn't worked so well so far this year for us. The flow is so intense the bees have filled the empty box below in a couple of days and gone on up into the boxes above ..... so we've had to blow, which is slower but no robbing ..... just a noisy job.
Who wants it ..... good question bighands ...... Lester might take a bit !

doubt it

 

[Trevor Gillbanks]

hi james
we tried your suggestion of using the top feeder as a bee escape. It worked really well. some boxes we haven’t even had to blow the bees out, just straight on the truck. I have a permaculture dislike of escape boards doing nothing for the rest of the year so we usually blow the bees out but when we leave harvest until this late in the the season robbing is a huge issue. your way when we took the honey off it was not drama and super quick. thanks

Do you have some photos on how you set it up. Thanks

 

[Gordie]

Do you have some photos on how you set it up. Thanks

Ditto, be interested to see the setup....I extracted yesterday(another 24kgs...44kg off the hive this summer, well done girls!)....I used a 'duckfoot' escape, was on there for 48hrs, still had a few bees remaining to brush off.

 

[nikki watts]

Nice.
The feeder escape hasn't worked so well so far this year for us. The flow is so intense the bees have filled the empty box below in a couple of days and gone on up into the boxes above ..... so we've had to blow, which is slower but no robbing ..... just a noisy job.
Who wants it ..... good question bighands ...... Lester might take a bit !

probably worked here then because the flow is pretty much dried up.

 

[nikki watts]

Do you have some photos on how you set it up. Thanks

 

[nikki watts]

we took the honey boxes off and scraped top and bottom of the frames into the feeder. cover them up then brood check and split taken off. We restacked the feeder then honey boxes. Two days later take the honey off, no going into the brood. no robbing and very little blowing required.
We leave our boxes in the shed overnight with the crown boards removed to allow left over bees to depart.

 

[nikki watts]

here’s one I sorted about 5 days ago. i left some as long as 10 days when i got too busy and the bees didn’t seem to have taken any honey back down below the feeder.

 

[Morporks]

I would be interested in seeing different designs for top feeders. any takers?

 

[Trevor Gillbanks]

I would be interested in seeing different designs for top feeders. any takers?

Start a thread.

 

[tristan]

the problem i can see with using a feeder as an escape board is the size of the holes.
most are generally to big which gives an easy route.
most escape boards have small holes and usually some sort of method to prevent or discourage bees from going back up.
there is only a few that are true one way escape boards.

i took boxes off mine this morning. still had a few bees left in them. escape boards don't always work well when there is not much room below them.

the other way i have done is to stack the boxes away from the hive, and put escape boards on top and bottom of the stack.

 

[stoney]

the other way i have done is to stack the boxes away from the hive, and put escape boards on top and bottom of the stack.

I use this method as well and it works great, I use a split board down first, then escape board then 5-6 FD boxes.. while I’m still working the site I’ll leave escapes on top as well which helps empty supers as they’re drawn up to the light, if robbing is an issue I switch the top escape for a mat , tie the stacks with mini strops and pop back to collect another day.
you can stack them on pallets on the trailer as well.. chock the wheels.. come back in a couple days hook her up and drag it to extraction.
Means the hives aren’t stacked up too high with all the weight on the top

 

[nikki watts]

the problem i can see with using a feeder as an escape board is the size of the holes.
most are generally to big which gives an easy route.
most escape boards have small holes and usually some sort of method to prevent or discourage bees from going back up.
there is only a few that are true one way escape boards.

i took boxes off mine this morning. still had a few bees left in them. escape boards don't always work well when there is not much room below them.

the other way i have done is to stack the boxes away from the hive, and put escape boards on top and bottom of the stack.

we have beetec plastic feeders with a central chimney and a plastic bee saver cover. Some hives we popped the cover right off and others we just jacked it up a little so the bees could go down under the edge. there wasn’t much difference. One or two hives had dead bees in the feeder but most were empty when we took the honey off. If we left honey in the field with any sort of opening I’m pretty sure there would be robbing if it was this late in the season, maybe ok on the flow though and it would save double handling the honey boxes.

 

[Gino de Graaf]

Escape boarding require bee proof honey boxes... unless on a reasonable flow.
For us,on pasture and maybe a box of surplus its hardly worth the investment of money or time.