Natural Community Bee Feeder

Questioning Standardized Bee Feeders

Have you ever examined Honey Bees, Wasps, Wood Wasps, Hornets, and Yellow Jackets as they feed and work certain trees and plants in their natural environment? Have you ever looked at trees and plants excreting a desired sap, tree or plant pollen, or better yet, Aphid goo (poop)?

Have you ever noticed how much room Nature provides for bee's and other insects to feed together upon? It's a bunch! Yet man in our infinite wisdom, have deemed that our bees should compete for food. Yet the nature of Nature, is to provide liberally for all... So why the little man-made bee feeders?

What is Aphid Goo? (Poop)
In Arkansas, we call the honey that comes from trees/Aphid excrement Honeydew-honey. Honeydew honey, is a dark, tasty honey, nutritiously high in minerals, with a wild, sweet, mineral, taste! Soooo good, and good for you!

Point being, is we often see bees and other pollinators, working the tree bark, leaves, branches, and sometimes gashes in the tree around the base and exposed roots, cleaning up tree sap, or performing follow up after the Aphid Community.

The Size of a Feeder Tree

The largeness of a tree, fermented my idea of the Natural Community Bee Feeder. Trees are huge, affording the bee community, massive amounts of feeding real estate. When feeding bees and others, space is a big deal! The more bees and other members of the pollination community can feed with elbow room, the less aggression they exhibit towards each other.

Feeding Square Footage, rather than Square Inches Helps:

I personally saw a Wood Wasp, desperate for food, bite one of my honey bees- nearly cutting it in half.

Most modern bee feeders, pile a lot of food in a narrow space, making bees and everybody else fight, for what they can get. To compete with the larger and more aggressive pollinator community, Bees end up burning extra energy needed for winter. Whereas providing a liberal amount of feeding square footage, helps everybody to eat! They all get along better.

Feeding Everybody Protects Bee Hives:

Hive/Queen killing Wasps, such as Yellow Jackets, White Faced Hornets and Wood Wasps, particularly in drought, can be particularly motivated rob your beehives, when hungry.  Hungry Hornets and Wood Wasps get grumpy and they will look for a fight. More heavily armoured, larger and stronger than Honey Bees, Wood Wasps have no problem killing Honey Bees simply because they cannot get food.

Because Honey Bees swarm around a bee feeder en mass, the only way a giant wasp can get room, is to bite it's way in. This I discovered one day, coming home from my carpenter job, I checked my newly made, 5 gallon bucket community bee feeder. I had earlier placed a plastic Hive Top, upside down creating a tray, and set my bucket therein. Later I discovered around 200 dead bees. The bees were dry, the tray was dry, they hadn't drowned, as far as I could tell. 200 bees may not sound like much, but at 200 a day, my newly established hives would die.  I also discovered Wood Wasps were part of the problem

Summing Up   

Having a large, easy to get to, surface area Community feeder place well away from the bee hives, will help feed your bees! Keeping the more aggressive, far larger, and meaner pollinator community happily eating away from your hives, rather than forcing bees to fight to keep what they have. 

Food for all is a good thing. More expensive to feed everybody is a yes! But it beats loosing your honey bees, as I nearly did. Feeding liberally to all, keeps the peace!

Besides? Why are the bees the only pollinator worth saving?