Ashforth Feeder, to suit British National Bee Hive
This is a wooden overall type of bee feeder that has the feeding station situated along one edge, it is a
bottom bee space type of
feeder. The design of this type is attributed to Harrison Ashforth. The main feed
reservoir is all in one piece and this particular version is suitable for the bottom bee space, B.S. National type of bee hive.
One of the objectives in this design is to allow the feeding
station to be positioned at the side of the hive that is lowest so
that gravity drains all the feed to where the bees can deal with it.
However I am suspicious that the edge is not the best place to
attract the bees to when conditions are cool or marginal.
The oblique Drawing above shows the basic layout of a feeder to suit
bottom bee space National hives, if you use top bee space then the 9 mm rim
at the bottom is not needed and the plywood base will need to be the full size
of 460 mm x 460 mm. The cover over the feeding station is omitted in
the drawing for clarity.
Rowse Miller Feeder
Two alternative underside views are shown inset, the version that
uses holes for bee access rather than slots is known as a
"Rowse Miller", but is merely an Ashforth design by another name.
I have a personal dislike of this type of feeder, although it is
slightly more simple than the Miller and is thus slightly cheaper to manufacture,
I have the concern that beekeepers are not always able to complete feeding for
winter at the appropriate time and thus if fed late the bees have a more
difficult task in taking the feed purely due to the temperature on the fringes
of the nest not being as high as that which occurs immediately over the centre of
the broodnest.
As someone who has often been late in feeding some of my colonies
simply due to not being able to get around to all of them at once and only having
enough feeders for about 40% of colonies, I do not see why anyone should be
further hampered by a design that does not take notice of the warm conditions
above the centre of the nest and the increased efficiency of feed take down that
this confers.
Originated... 17 May 2002,
Uploaded... 22 June 2002,
New Domain... 01 July 2004,
