> my colleague from Europe thought that our local beekeeper should not keep back supers of honey in the comb for feeding in late winter, early spring. > Again, in his mind, fondant was superior to all feed stocks. Context is the key. In the deep of winter, if I could feed good fondant without disturbing the brood nest, and I had enough good fondant in trays, I would prefer the fondant. If the winter were past and spring beginning, I would prefer the combs, assuming they were not too stale. Even a small rearrangement of the brood nest in winter increases mortality. Rob Currie reported noticing that even doing the minor work of inserting sampling probes while the bees were in winter cluster had that effect. I have some hives on a scale and did a major disturbance the other day. They went from consuming almost nothing over preceding 24 hour periods to losing a half-pound in two hours immediately after the manipulation! That manipulation was -- in my mind at least -- nothing as severe as removing and adding new, totally unfamiliar combs. (I merely removed some upper boxes on which there were a few bees at the very top of the cluster and brushed, shook or blew those few bees down). So, what I am saying is that it may not be the feed, It may be the amount of associated disturbance. *********************************************** 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