Top Feeding Methods: Choosing the Right Bee Feeder for Your Hive

A Practical Guide to Bee Feeders, Sugar Syrup, and Knowing When (and How) to Feed Your Australian Beehive

Should you feed your bees? When? With what? And which type of feeder is best? Bee feeding is one of the most common questions Australian beekeepers ask — and for good reason. Done well, feeding can save a struggling hive, boost colony growth, and prepare your bees for winter. Done poorly, it can trigger robbing, encourage disease, or even harm your bees.

At Beekeeping Gear, we’ve helped thousands of Australian beekeepers feed their bees successfully since 2016. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know — when to feed, what to feed, and which feeder works best for your setup.

When Should You Feed Your Bees?

Healthy, established colonies in good seasons usually look after themselves. But there are several situations where feeding is genuinely helpful:

• Starting a new colony from a package or nuc
• Late winter / early spring — when stores run low before the first nectar flow
• After a long dearth — when no flowers are blooming
• Drought or extreme weather — when bees can’t forage normally
• Newly installed swarms or weak, struggling colonies
• Before winter, to top up stores so bees don’t starve

Don’t feed: during honey flow, when honey supers are on, or in strong, healthy hives during good seasons. The golden rule: feed bees when they need it, not because you feel like it.

The Best Feed Is the Bees’ Own Honey

This is one of the most important things any beekeeper should understand: the best food for bees is the honey they made themselves. Sugar syrup is a useful tool when needed, but it’s not a substitute for real honey. Honey contains hundreds of trace nutrients, enzymes, and antioxidants that bees evolved to need — sugar syrup is just sucrose and water.

Bees fed primarily on their own honey live longer, raise stronger brood, resist pests and disease better, and survive winters more reliably.

Best practice: Leave a good amount of honey for the bees

When harvesting, always leave enough honey behind for your bees to survive winter and any dearth periods. In Australia, this typically means leaving 8–15kg of honey in the hive going into winter (more in cooler regions like Tasmania and Victoria, less in QLD). Don’t strip the brood box, and never harvest the “honey arc” above the brood — it’s essential for bee nutrition.

It’s tempting to maximise your harvest, but greedy harvesting is one of the leading causes of colony loss. A bee that has plenty of its own honey rarely needs supplemental feeding. When in doubt, take less honey.

That said, if your hive genuinely runs low on food, please feed them. Letting bees starve when you have the means to feed them is far worse than supplementing with sugar syrup. The principle is simple: bees first, honey second. Take what they can spare, leave what they need, and feed when they need it — otherwise you may lose your bees.

Strong Colonies Resist Pests and Disease

Here’s a fundamental truth of beekeeping: a strong, well-fed, populous hive is naturally far more resistant to Varroa mite, small hive beetle, wax moth, and disease than a weak hive. Pests and diseases attack weakness — they’re opportunists that thrive when colonies are stressed, hungry, or underpopulated.

Strong colonies have more guard bees defending the entrance, better hygiene, faster mite-grooming behaviour, more consistent brood temperatures, and stronger immune responses. A hive packed with healthy, well-fed bees is one of the most effective defences against pest pressure that nature provides.

In contrast, weak colonies become pest magnets. Beetle larvae need somewhere unguarded to develop, wax moths need neglected comb, and Varroa multiplies fastest in colonies whose bees are too few to fight back.

How to keep your colonies strong:

• Don’t strip them of honey — leave generous reserves
• Requeen old or underperforming queens (we sell Italian F1 queens year-round)
• Reduce hive entrances when colonies are small or pest pressure is high
• Combine weak colonies rather than nursing them through winter
• Feed when genuinely needed — a starving colony is a weak colony

Get the basics right, and pest management becomes far easier. Strong colonies need fewer chemical treatments, fewer interventions, and produce more honey.

What Should You Feed Bees?

Bees need two main things from supplemental feeding: carbohydrates (sugar) and sometimes protein (pollen).

Sugar Syrup

• 1:1 syrup (equal parts sugar and water) — stimulates brood and comb building. Use in spring/summer
• 2:1 syrup (twice as much sugar) — closer to honey consistency. Use in autumn for winter stores.

Use plain white cane sugar only — never raw, brown, or organic unrefined sugar. Boil water, remove from heat, dissolve sugar, and cool before feeding.

⚠️ Never give bees honey from another hive or commercial honey — it’s the most common way to spread American Foulbrood (AFB), one of the most serious bee diseases in Australia.

Pollen Substitute

Pollen patties provide protein for a healthy brood. Use when natural pollen is scarce (winter, drought) or to boost spring brood production. We stock VitaHive Brood Booster and Fat Bees Not Skinny Bees — both excellent Australian-formulated nutrition products.

The Main Types of Bee Feeders

1. Top Feeders (Hive Top Feeders)

A top feeder sits on top of the hive (under the lid) and holds 8–12L of syrup. Bees access it from inside the hive.

• Pros: large capacity, bees stay inside (no robbing), great for cold weather, easy to refill
• Cons: bulkier, heavier when full, more expensive
• Best for: autumn feeding, winter prep, large-volume feeding

2. Frame Feeders (Division Board Feeders)

A frame feeder replaces a regular frame inside the brood box, holding 1–2L of syrup.

• Pros: compact, bees feed inside, great for nucs and small colonies, always accessible
• Cons: takes up frame space, smaller capacity, drowning risk without a float
• Best for: small colonies, nucs, splits

3. Entrance Feeders (Boardman Feeders)

An entrance feeder is a small container at the front entrance of the hive.

• Pros: easy to install and monitor, cheap, great for quick top-ups
• Cons: high robbing risk, small capacity, problematic in cold weather
• Best for: quick top-ups, beginners, package installation in warm weather

4. Internal Bag/Pouch Feeders

A sealed plastic bag of syrup is placed on top of the frames; bees chew tiny holes to feed. Cheap and disposable, useful for emergency feeding, but messy and single-use.

5. External (Open) Feeding — ILLEGAL in Australia

This involves placing syrup in a large container away from the hive, letting any bees in the area come and feed. Open feeding is illegal in Australia under biosecurity law — and we strongly recommend against it. It’s one of the fastest ways to spread devastating diseases like American Foulbrood, Nosema, and Varroa between colonies. It also triggers heavy robbing and attracts wasps and pests.

Always feed inside the hive, never outside it. Internal feeders are safer for your bees, your neighbours’ bees, and the wider Australian beekeeping industry.

Which Feeder Should You Choose?

A quick guide based on your situation:

• Starting a new package or nuc: frame feeder or top feeder
• Autumn feeding for winter: top feeder (large volume)
• Quick top-up in summer: entrance feeder
• Small colonies/splits: frame feeder
• Cold winter feeding: top feeder or pouch feeder
• Hobbyist with 1–2 hives: frame feeder + entrance feeder combo

For most Australian backyard beekeepers, a top feeder for autumn feeding plus a frame feeder for small colonies is the ideal combination.

Practical Tips for Successful Feeding

Avoid robbing

Feed late in the afternoon, reduce the hive entrance, use internal feeders, don’t spill syrup, and avoid feeding during dearth when robbing pressure is highest.

Use the right syrup ratio for the season.

Spring/summer = 1:1 (stimulates brood). Autumn = 2:1 (fills winter stores).

Keep syrup fresh

Make small batches, refrigerate excess, and discard if it smells off or has mould.

Check stores regularly

The “heft test” — gently lift the back of the hive — tells you roughly how heavy it is. With practice, you’ll develop a feel for when feeding is needed.

Stop feeding before the honey flow.

When the first major nectar flow begins, stop feeding immediately — continued feeding contaminates honey supers with sugar.

Top 5 Bee Feeding Mistakes to Avoid

• Feeding during honey flow contaminates your honey crop
• Using brown, raw, or organic sugar — contains impurities harmful to bees
• Sharing honey between hives — spreads disease (especially AFB)
• Open feeding — illegal in Australia, causes robbing and disease spread
• Overfeeding healthy hives — bees know what they need; trust them in good seasons

How Beekeeping Gear Can Help

We stock a complete range of bee feeders and feeding supplies at our Sydney and QLD locations:

• Top feeders, frame feeders, and entrance feeders
• VitaHive Brood Booster and Fat Bees Not Skinny Bees — protein supplements
• Italian F1 queen bees — year-round availability for new colonies
• Beekeeping starter kits — including feeders for beginners
• Expert advice at our Granville (Sydney) and Meadowbrook (QLD) showrooms

Visit us in person, call 1300 692 766, or shop online at beekeepinggear.com.au.

Final Thoughts

Bee feeding is one of the most useful skills any beekeeper can master. The keys to success: feed only when needed, leave plenty of honey for the bees first, choose the right feeder, and never compromise on hygiene or sugar quality. Remember — a strong, well-fed colony is your best defence against pests and disease.