At 12:37 PM 2/8/99 +0100, you wrote:
>        Hi there,
>
>    Can anybody please explain, in detail, what are the advantages of sugar
>feeding versus the normal natural diluted honey one.
>
>    Isn't this "sugar feeding" a big mistake from the biological, genetical
>and immunological points of view?
>
 
I think one of the keys to this question is that in nature, the honeybee
will not find sources of honey cut with water laying around, so feeding
bees diluted honey has nothing to do with nature. On the other hand bees
are designed to take some forms of sugar and use them as food. While cane
sugar may not be an exact match, it is close enough.
 
So from a "biological" and "genetical" it makes more sense to feed this
type of sugar. While not a pure "immunological" issue, the reduced chance
of passing AFB spores to a colony makes sugar worth it.
 
Al Lipscomb
[log in to unmask]  1275 4932 DFA1 97EB D3A1  903D 7563 2936 A66B 86B3
MCSE    AA4YU