>As Peter says, you need to feed 35 to 50 pounds of sugar to do any real good if you are installing on foundation.  My observation by doing tests is it takes the same 35 to 50 pounds of sugar regardless of the strength used.

I am constantly amazed at the eye-watering amount of sugar that some people feed to bees; I wonder how on earth they ever make any profit!

We feed just half a block of fondant (i.e. 6.25kg or about 13lbs in old money) to colonies for wintering; we have a few colonies on double British Standard brood boxes (the majority are on singles) and those are not normally fed anything.

After the most miserable, bitterly cold and incredibly wet prolonged winter that has continued until a few days ago, we have only just started going around our apiaries and putting on supers - first inspections proper will have to wait a little longer - but what is really noticeable is the amount of fondant still remaining on most colonies.

Of course, we select for A.m.m. which is noted for its thriftiness.

Oh, and in case anyone thinks that this leads to low crops, our average crop for the past 37 years, based on the number of hives fed down for winter in the previous autumn, is over 60lbs per colony.  We could easily improve this figure if we were to cull weak colonies in the autumn, but part of our breeding programme philosophy is to allow all colonies to go into winter just to see how they perform (we are frequently surprised to see small colonies survive and then go on to greater things the following season).

To me, it is all about input and output.  I see little point in feeding 100 lbs of sugar to get 50lbs of honey!

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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