From Chris Slade: Did you notice any difference in stores consumption? Hi Chris: I did not measure the stores consumption. Here the challenge is to get them through alive rather than to minimize costs. They normally go into winter with a top deep brood chamber full of capped honey, and are fed two to three gallons of medicated sugar syrup. They come out in spring with about four frames still full of honey. An aside on the solar radiation. In the winter here the sun is very low in the sky and the radiation passes through a very thick wedge of air, making its effect much less than it would be in lower latitudes. From October to March, the days are only about 9 hours long and the nights about 15 hours. So the hives get weak solar input for nine hours and radiate away at the usual rate for fifteen hours. Not much help there. Donald Aitken *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Access BEE-L directly at: http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L