Roger Flanders wrote:
>
> William Lord wrote: >"..I know the Bulgarians go into
> the hive in the spring and take a cappings
> scratcher and scratch the capped honey adjacent to
> the brood and get the colony to eat and expand,
> but this is too labor intensive for me."
>
> Fascinating.  Do Bulgarian beekeepers do this in
> lieu of spring syrup feeding?  How early in their
> spring do they try to stimulate feeding?

We do the same here. Why feed if there is plenty of winter stores still
present in the brood chamber (sugar syrup from the autumn in our case)?
The theory is that the bees clean up the weepings from the scratched
cells which encourages them to eat more, concentrate on fetching pollen
and increase brood production. After a bad winter (ie one with many up
and down temp fluctuations) stores are usually low and of course one
then has to feed but as long as the weather is halfway reasonable the
bees soon fetch more than enough themselves without any need for
"stimulation".

Cheers Tony
Carniolans
62 degrees north (approx)

--
Anthony N Morgan,
Førsteammanuensis
Institutt for Elektroteknikk
Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag
N-7004 Trondheim, Norway
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