Hello fellow fellow meaders...ers I started my first batch of mead 4 days ago in a bucket. My liquid yeast didn't seem to proof or maybe it did, but not like the yeast I'm used to (for baking) so I got impatient after about 3 hours and pitched it anyways. My mead is a 5 gallon batch with 15lb of commercial walmart type clover honey (i'm cheap and live in rural Alaska shipping is a killer)and sweet mead liquid yeast. After 3 days my bucket seemed to have a little pressure on the lid but no bubbling so I duct taped the edges of the lid trying to eliminate any air leaks and moved it from the top shelve of my pantry/furnace room to the floor besides my very actively fermenting beer. I let it sitt over night and by that point it had NO pressure on the lid (meaning if i pushed down a bit it would force gas out through the air lock) it was comatose. I looked lovingly at my lager in a carboy bubbling away then right next to it to my with anger at my comatose mead. I put a thermometer on the floor and was surprised holy crap its 64F..that has to be hella cold. Seems to be fine for my beer but I guess mead it needs to be warmer. So with my newly duct taped lid I put my bucket back on the top shelve and closed my furnace room door. I know it gets up to 90degrees in there it might be too hot but by this point I was going for broke. So 9 hours later (present) I walked in my pantry/furnace room looking for late night munchies and heard a tapping sound ever 10 seconds I looked around not able to find the cause of the sound. I decided to take one last look at the bucket before going to sleep and wondered...why is the inner piece of my 3 piece air lock at an angel? I tried to push it down lightly but it bobbed back up then guess what a bubble(the tapping sound was the airlock)! After almost 5 days the mead gods answered my call! And visible fermentation had begun, i'm a total brewing noob so it was a big deal to see the airlock activity. This is sort of a long post but i'm just excited to see its working.