Feeding the Blue Heron Hives (Creatively)

I've had a bee and Easter filled couple of days with way too much on my schedule. So as I was frantically running around, I realized that I actually had about 30 minutes to run a bag of suger syrup over to the bees at Blue Heron. I grabbed the mixing bowl with the bag of sugar syrup in it, jumped in my car, and drove the 7 - 8 minutes to the preserve.

I got out of the car and realized that I had not brought an empty hive box to use as a surround for the baggie feeder. I didn't have time to go home and get one and do this yet again.

However, I've bought a ventilated inner cover for this hive. It should add to ventilation and in addition it is raised up about 1 1/4 inches from the tops of the bars. I considered this and thought I would experiment. I laid the bag down, slowly and gently to avoid squashing bees. Then I slit the baggie on the top.



I laid the ventilated cover over the frames and it worked! There wasn't much room for a bee to feed, but I can imagine that they will be able to use it just fine.



I closed the top on this happy hive, grabbed the now empty nuc box and top and headed for the car.



Don't these bees look happy? I think they will enjoy their new home at Blue Heron and I am sure glad to have bees there again. Inspections at the Blue Heron hives start on April 18 for members of Metro Atlanta Beekeepers or people who took the short course we offered in January.