Keith Benson said:

> On one of the other lists there was the position put forward that honey was
> an inherently superior bee feed,

This is an area where the Bee-L archives would provide a goldmine of material.
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l

I'm not sure that there is any one "inherently superior" feed for bees.
Each has advantages and drawbacks.  The biggest problem with honey
is that it is a very expensive bee feed as compared to all other options.

Cost aside, honey can be thought of as "beef jerky for bees".  If one feeds honey,
one forces the bees to gather and use more water, which may be difficult or
impossible in winter or early spring.  If one dilutes the honey with water to make
a "2:1 or 1:1 syrup", one soon gets fermented honey, which is not a good idea at all.

On the other hand, if one feeds sugar syrup, the water problem does not exist.
Since most feeding is done at times when the bees may not be able to fly
every day, I'd conclude that feeding a more diluted (nectar-like) syrup would
provide the bees with a more useful food supply for the purpose at hand.

The important point here is to stress that bees do not consume honey
directly, but must dilute it first.  This takes water.  Bees don't store much
water.

> and that were one to feed bees sugar syrup (even organic sugar syrup), that
> the honey that came from that hive later could not be called organic.

I don't know much about the details of the proposed organic standards, so I can't say.

> It was also contended that feeding honey would sustain a colony for a longer
> period of time than sugar syrup, all things being otherwise equal.  No data was
> presented, but there was a "belief" and a desire that this be true.

The above seems reasonable, given the concentration of sugars in honey versus
that in syrups.  Bees make honey just about as "concentrated" as they can make it.
They want to store the maximum "food value" in the minimum space.

I don't really see how this has any impact on practical beekeeping, since one can
build a hive-top feeder with any capacity one wishes if one does not want to refill the
feeder, or follow the practice of "open feeding" a yard with one or more 55-gallon drums
of sugar syrup, honey, or HFCS.

The basic problem is the water.  "Sustain a colony WHEN?" is the operative
question, and if the answer is "winter", I'd disagree on a practical level.

        jim