In this No Nonsense Beekeeping episode, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey reviews the Bee Equipment English feeder after a year of ownership. He demonstrates how to install the feeder on a hive and discusses its key attributes: a shallow, plastic construction that fits multi‑purpose crown boards, a relatively large 4–5 L capacity compared with typical 2 L rapid feeders, a ventilated entrance that reduces mold, and a tight‑fitting lid that deters wasps and robbing. Edwards highlights practical considerations such as the need to keep the feeder level for proper syrup flow and notes that bees can become aggressive during feeding season. While he prefers a larger poly Ashforth feeder, he recommends the English feeder for beekeepers who avoid poly products, appreciate its capacity, and want a cost‑effective, non‑rotating plastic option. He concludes with a buying recommendation, noting the feeder’s reasonable price and suitability for wooden hives or crown‑board setups.
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Today I'm going to review the plastic English feeder from Bee Equipment. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I have had the Bee Equipment English feeder for one whole year pretty much now, and I've still not got around to using it. So in this video, I'm just going to do a quick review of the product. I'm going to set it up onto a hive as well. I'm going to talk to you about what I like about it, What I don't like about it, and just give you my general recommendations for the product. Right, slightly unorthodox table that I'm using for today's video, but this is my Bee Equipment English feeder, and I have to say I do really, really like this feeder. It's a really nice solid feeder. It's made of relatively thin plastic, but the thing that I love most about it is the big capacity that it's got. Now I like a really big capacity Ashforth feeder, 15 liters. This one here though holds about 4 or 5 liters. I'll pop it up at the bottom just to give you a confirmed reading of it, but it's much bigger than the 2-liter rapid feeders that you normally get. And what else I really like about it is that it's very, very shallow, so it fits into a multi-purpose crown board quite well. This is no-nonsense beekeeping. You get to see every single sting to the face, right on the eyebrow. What I was saying is it's a really nice shallow feeder, which means it fits into a multi-purpose crown board really, really well, and it's just got a good capacity on it as well. So it comes, you get a roof like this, nice firm plastic roof, got lips around the edge so you can protect anything coming in. If you're doing just open feeding on the top, the bees can't get in, wasps can't get in, you're not going to get any robbing because you've got a nice tight-fitting lid, which is really good, nice design. And then very similar to a normal rapid feeder, you have an entrance hole like that. Like that it's ventilated, makes a big difference that it's ventilated, stops any mold growing in there. Allows more bees to come up as well. And that just pops into the top like that. But what I like, like I said before, you get a big capacity in here. You do need to make sure that it's level. The more out of level it is, the less sugar syrup you're gonna get in there. But compared to a rapid feeder, it's considerably bigger. You can get a good 4 litres of syrup in here. And that's about it. There's not a huge amount more that you can say about a rapid feeder other than it's pretty cheap. I like the fact that it's cheap. I like the fact that it's plastic, so it's not going to rot. I like the fact that there's a good amount of capacity in it to get a good amount of sugar syrup in there. I don't like that all these bees are buzzing around because it's feeding season, and feeding season the bees always get angry because there's no flows on and they're just intent on getting anything they can. They can probably smell the old sugar syrup on this feeder, so they're having a little bit of a go at me. But would I recommend this product? Yes, with a caveat. The caveat is I'd prefer a polyash forth feeder. That's just my method, but if you've already got multi-purpose crown boards or you've got wooden hives and you don't want poly feeders, I think an English feeder like this is a good way to go. So there we go, that's the end of the video, and that is my review of the Bee Equipment English feeder. And I have to say, I really do like this product. Personally, I prefer a big Ashforth feeder, nice big poly Ashforth feeder, but if you're really not the kind of person that wants to use a poly feeder or any sort of poly products, but you want a nice big feeder that will take a good amount of syrup, that will fit inside a multi-purpose crown board, I do think that the, the Bee Equipment English feeders are really, really good. And if you can pick them up in the sales as well, they're not that expensive at all. Definitely get my recommendation. So I hope you enjoyed that video. Hope you found it useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
