Comparing North America to Northern Europe.
I'm near Stockholm Sweden at lat 60, and don't speak for the rest of 
the country. As Lloyd pointed out there are big differences between 
north and south. But when my location came up in the discussion, I'll 
ad a few thoughts from my side of the pond.

One thing is often forgotten in this recycled annual discussion. That 
the bees react to day length at least as much as temp in spring. They 
start brood rearing when days get longer, to build up numbers for 
summer foraging. At lower latitudes, with colder winters (inland 
climate)they will start up earlier than up north even if it's warmer 
there. The shorter the summer, the faster they need to build up. 
Northern bees will start later and keep a larger brood nest to 
compensate.

This is the reason you need more winter feed in northern US and Canada 
than we ever consider giving them in Sweden. It also gives you strong 
enough colonies to split before the honey flow, difficult here without 
loosing honey. Season is just too short at lat 60. Spring splits are 
usually made small to build up during summer for replacing next 
winters losses. Alternatively made strong enough to winter in autumn 
after honey flow. I'm wintering on 20 kg / 44 lb of dry weight sugar. 
The old dark bee wintered on 12 kg / 26 lb.

We got frost at night now, bees haven't been out for 2 weeks. I expect 
first cleansing flight in April. Most bees are 2 months old going into 
winter, so there are some old bees starting up next year. When they 
start later they rely much on spring forage for build up. Coltsfoot, 
Willows, Dandelions. Smaller colonies will wait until they can fly 
before starting up brood rearing.

There is another aspect of wintering that intrigue me. There are a 
number of anecdotes about hives having a hard time during winter 
producing better next summer. Br Adam long ago stated that bees need 
to have a cold winter to produce good. And he kept detailed records. 
Just as if there is a memory function within the colony despite the 
continual changing of worker bees through the season. Bill wrote about 
epigenetics on Aug 3, That might explain what some are seeing.... 
Question arises, can we get to a state where we protect them too much? 
Even if we get a larger number of bees through winter, we might 
actually get more honey in the end if we gave them a little harder 
time. Allen, if you ever stop splitting ;-) and take a crop, you might 
see some difference between wood and plastic hives...

--
P-O

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