> When I feed a half gallon (~2 L) of 1:1 sucrose syrup during dearths, it
often seems that the hives put on more weight than the the syrup given would
account for. It appears to me that the syrup stimulates the foragers to go
out and find something. 

Dave Green used to talk about this: stimulating foraging by feeding a bit of syrup.

I reported here once that years ago I had supplied a barrel of feed syrup to yard in late fall because some of the hives were a bit light.  They were not so light that they had not settled in for winter, but I was worried and took the feed out and left the drum open, with a good mat of straw on top to provide a float.

After a week, the bees had not even visited the drum, so I took a bucket, dipped a few gallons out, lifted each hive lid, and poured a measuring cupful over each cluster through the whole yard.

The next day I returned and was able to take the empty drum home.

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