In this concise product review, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey evaluates the Maysmore Miller poly feeder designed for Maysmore-format poly hives. He explains why the feeder is necessary due to proprietary dimensions that prevent use of other brands, and outlines the key design features: a thick poly body, an integrated bee‑space rim, a central entrance slot, and an 8‑9 L syrup capacity. Edwards stresses the importance of painting both the exterior and interior of the feeder with exterior‑grade gloss, masonry paint, or spray paint to prevent UV degradation, poly seepage, and mold growth. He compares the feeder to Suyenti’s Poly Ashforth feeder, noting that the central slot makes fondant feeding awkward, whereas the Ashforth’s offset slot is more convenient. Overall, he gives the Maysmore feeder a thumbs‑up for its solid construction and fit with Maysmore kits, while advising buyers to paint it properly and be aware of its fondant‑feeding limitation.
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Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to review the Maysmore Miller poly feeder. So you might have seen previous videos, I bought myself a Maysmore poly hive. I've done a separate video on how to assemble that hive. I've done a separate video reviewing that hive, talking about all the technical features and my reviews and recommendations. And now I'm just following that up with a separate review for the Maysmore Miller poly feeder. So when I bought the hive, I realized, oops, I haven't got a feeder for this one, and none of my Suyenti poly feeders fit on it. So I needed a separate proprietary feeder to go with it. That was my big pet hate with the whole hive, is that you're locked into that standard, uh, Maysmore size, and I can't use any other feeder to go with it. So I had to go and buy the Maysmore one, which was annoying Because it meant that I had to pay however much they wanted for it. Couldn't go to a separate person and say, can I have that cheaper? Couldn't play anyone off each other and say, I'm getting a discount here, or I'm getting a discount there. Had to go to Maysmore, and I had to get it directly from them or through one of their stockists. So I got hold of it, and this is what it looks like. So pretty basic. I'll talk to you a little bit in this video about the features and the functionality of it. It's a really basic piece of kit. And I'll tell you a little bit about what I like about it and what I don't like about it. So first off, a word of caution: when you're using these, make sure you paint the exterior of them. They can degrade due to UV light. More importantly than that, make sure you paint the interior as well. Don't often paint the interior of hives, but with feeders you need to either use an exterior-grade gloss or an exterior-grade Santex masonry paint, or any masonry paint. Just to seal that poly. Otherwise what happens is it seeps into the poly and then you get mold and it's not very nice. Spray paint works surprisingly well as well, so any car spray paint, you just spray the inside, then that's good to go. Really simple design though. You have an entrance slot in the middle, you place that directly on top of any Maysmore box— has to be a Maysmore box. As you can see, they line up perfectly. The bees enter up through that central slot. And then you fill these 2 areas here with syrup. And it takes about 8 or 9 liters, I think. I'll just confirm how much that is. Takes a really decent amount of syrup. And then the bees take it down really quick. It's a good, effective feeder. And what I like about it is there is a lot of material there. They've designed that lot of material to stop wasps boring in because you get a little bit of leakage out through the poly. So they've made it nice and thick. They've really put a lot of material in there, hence why these are quite expensive. And that stops the syrup seeping through and you getting any wasp attacks. Now, one thing that they've taken note of, of this one, and it makes it head and shoulders above the Poly Ashforth Fedas from Suyenti, is that they've put a single bee space rib round the edge. Now, what a great piece of easy design to fulfill. Why Suyenti didn't do that, God only knows. People talk about it being a top bee space hive that they modified to be bottom bee space. I don't really buy into that. I just think it was really poor design from them, so I've had to add these rims all the way around mine. Luckily, the Maysmore one is fully built in. The product is ready to go. That's what you'd expect from a good, competent supplier of poly material. So all you do is you've got your bottom bee space super or brood box, which will sit flush with the mating faces. You put the new box on like that, the poly feeder, And then you've got enough space for the bees to move around underneath the bottom to access that slot. Now these feeders, they will take down the syrup so quickly because you've got such a big central slot. It's nice, I like having the slot in the middle for one reason, and that is you tend to get the bees finding it a lot quicker. But it does really ruin this product for me for one simple reason, and that is it makes it a lot more difficult to feed fondant in this. Now the way that I feed fondant in my polyhives is I flip them upside down, I put the fondant on there, so on my poly Ashforth ones I'd put a big slab of fondant in the middle just rested directly on the bees and then I would pop an upturned feeder on top of it like that. I can't do that with this one because there's a big feeding slot in the middle, whereas the poly Ashforth feeder, the feeding slot is offset to one side, So you can just put the fondant to the other side. So what I would need to do on here if I was going to feed fondant through it is I'd have to chop that in half and put half there, half there, and then try and navigate this roof on somehow. So it would work, and I will do that once I get to the point where I get bees in here and they need feeding. But it's just a little bit of an annoyance with the Miller feeder because if it's off to one side, then you don't have that issue at all. So my preference, definitely the Ashforth feeder is definitely superior to the millet feeder in my opinion. And that's all I've really got to say about it. It's a really quick short review just for anyone looking to buy the Mazemore Poly Millet Feeder. It's fine, it works, it fits in with all of their kit. There's a good amount of material on it. You can feed fondant in it as well if you need to, but just make sure you're on the slots. It's got the B-Space rim underneath already built in. It's a good product and it works really well as long as you're on the Maysmoor format. Just take my advice though, make sure you paint the interior with an exterior-grade gloss or a spray paint or a masonry paint, and then paint the outside with, with whatever you want. Anything exterior-grade will work. And that's it for the review. Really quick one, really short one. This product though definitely gets the thumbs up from me. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. 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. Bye.
