Inside Plastic Feeders

If you live in the Pacific Northwest or in any area with cool, spring climate, this is the feeder that we recommend.

Also known as a “division board feeder” because it could potentially divide frames of brood within a hive, inside feeders keep liquid feed closest to the warm winter cluster surrounding the queen. When honey bees have to travel very far outside of their warm cluster, they lose much of their energy and are more likely to die. This is especially important for a newly installed package of bees that haven’t had a chance to build their colony yet. It takes all the energy they can get just to stay warm in cooler spring weather. 

Our plastic inside feeders are made of a heavy-duty, leak-proof black polypropylene plastic that will last for multiple seasons. They will hold approximately 1 gallon of liquid feed and take the place of 1 ½ frames in the hive (This means you’ll need to remove two regular frames).

Typically, inside feeders are placed in frame position 1 or 10 in the bottom brood box. If the weather is extremely cold, some beekeepers will place them in in frame position 2 or 9 of the bottom brood box if they don’t think the cluster of bees could get to the outside position.

Once nice feature of our inside hive feeders is that they have textured inner walls which help keep the bees from drowning. For additional protection from drowning, we recommend to use this feeder in combination with a cap and ladder.