As often we get lots of good advice, all most all valid. The take away is, as Bill T says, All beekeeping is local. Read it all and think of what you are trying to achieve. I use 100# sugar to 8 gal. H2O, 16 gal yield, year round. More specifically when I feed, witch is a little in spring and as much as necessary in fall. Spring feed for me is not to stimulate but to prevent starvation and is done only if there is less than 2 frames of stores. If the colony had good winter stores they will build up fine and in their own time.  Stock is Carni./WSU/Paul's mutts. It helps reduce swarming a little, (I think). They draw comb just fine on it also. Fall is to get any light ones up to my winter requirement of 12 frames capped stores. Varies from 0 to 3 gal. per colony. They should take a gal. in a day, 2 days maxs. If not they don't want it or something else is wrong and you need to look into it. I'm a honey producer with 150lbs.+/- average.

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA

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