> I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned that you can sell a pound of
> honey and buy about 6 pounds of sugar with the proceeds.  I wonder if people
> would be so keen on feeding sugar if this was not the case.  I seem to be
> getting very cynical these days.
 
No Chris, you're not getting cynical.  It's true.  I confess.
 
When the price of sugar and the price of honey got fairly close here in
Canada a few years back, we got selfish and made the bees winter on honey.
 
 It hurt us to do it, but we just found that we could not get paid for all
the work involved in taking that troublesome honey away and giving them
that good refined sugar.
 
Amazingly most of them survived.
 
> One reason why sugar feeding might have become necessary is the
> practice of taking strains of bees that have evolved for a short winter
> like Italy and asking them to over winter in a place  with a much longer
> and colder winter as found in much of the US and Canada.  Such bees
> might do better without the gut filling solids found in honey.
 
Well, I find that every year my bees are getting yellower and yellower.
 
Sure you have to feed Italian bees, but in turn they will feed you.  As
for wintering, in my experience there are some bees that winter and some
that don't.  Race doesn't seem to be the deciding factor (sorry there,
racists).
 
There are some bees of any colour or any race that are just good.  some
bees make it thru by being long lived tough individuals, some by being
short lived prolific social beings.
 
> Does Stefan have any information on how the Apis mellifera mellifera
> bees of continental northern Europe are prepared for and survive long
> cold winters?
 
By _natural_ methods, I trust?
 
Allen