# frame feeder mountain camp (dry sugar) ideas



## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

You could put them on a shim with a hardware cloth bottom the bees can access the sugar that way, and you could have an upper entrance in the shim.


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

I don't understand. Why would I want an open bottom? Sugar could fall. Humidity could mix with sugar to make syrup that drips. That's stuff that can fall on bees when you don't want it to. With my current method, sugar fell through the screened bottom board.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

When you do mountain camp method, doesn’t the sugar get hard from the respiration of the bees? You can make a shim filled with hardened sugar, they can eat it from the bottom without breaking cluster; it absorbs the moisture also and an upper entrance. I have been using them for a few years now.


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

My bees survived when I used my current method. That doesn't mean its good. That has the same problems.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

SeaCucumber said:


> I don't understand. Why would I want an open bottom? Sugar could fall. Humidity could mix with sugar to make syrup that drips. That's stuff that can fall on bees when you don't want it to. With my current method, sugar fell through the screened bottom board.
> 
> View attachment 58361
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Apparently you winter is too humid if the dry sugar would turn into slush.
Or you are told so (but it is not necessarily so).
Or should read up on the MC method - there is nothing to fall through if you follower the instructions.
If it is indeed really too humid - well, just place the dry sugar on top of waxed paper with few slits - the sugar slush will stay where placed and the bees will eat it through the slits.

For most all upper states, the sugar just clumps up into a solid rock when placed directly above the bees (one typically sprays it with water too - to create initial crust).
Hard feed is most logically placed directly above the bee cluster - where it is the warmest and easiest for the bees to feed, and where the water vapors condense into the sugar.
This is a classic way to feed bees with dry sugar in winter.
That's what I do, really is as simple as a pile of junk, recycled sugar.


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## SeaCucumber (Jun 5, 2014)

Last year, leftover sugar bricks were extra porous, sponge-like, dry, and fragile. A lot fell through the screen. That could feed ants.

I don't like what you 2 recommend. It has the same problems as what I came up with last year. If sugar is on top, cloth or waxed paper might reduce the amount of sugar that falls.

Dry feed is my favorite. Bees don't like it, so its a timed release. I want it where its the hardest for them to get at.


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