"we should not be taking honey that the bees might need for
themselves. And if they cannot produce enough to support
themselves, then to supplement them with artificial feed is
to select for inferior bees."
This is simply inane. Bees are well proven to survive better on sugar than on honey when there is a difference. You only select for inferior bees when you actually selectively breed. No professional queen breeder is ever going to select against productivity. As most back yard bee keepers increase by splits of hives on the verge of swarming or swarms they are strongly selectively breeding for swarming and probably nothing else in most cases. This is doing far more damage to the gene pool than feeding sugar will ever do. I will admit I have a prejudice against ever using swarm cells. In my opinion swarm cells are only good for one thing. Grubbing out with a dull knife and throwing away.
Dick
" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner." Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists. "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong." H. L. Mencken
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