The practice of feeding sugar predates modern beekeeping:
> Feeding Bees. In case you have neither honey-combs nor honey to feed with, you may give thein a little sugar and water mixed together — James Bonner (1789) The Bee-Master's Companion, and Assistant, Etc - Page 115
Before A. I. Root started his own magazine, he contributed to the ABJ:
After introducing so valuable a queen, I began to think it would be advisable to feed my swarm up to a point beyond the probability of starving during the winter, and accordingly purchased enough coffee sugar to make twenty pounds of syrup, which I fed to them in the top of the hive as fast as they would carry it down; but it being late in the season and the weather rather cool, they did not take it down very fast. — 1867 American Bee Journal
other reports:
> my my first year's bee-keeping was not very profitable, that is in dollars and cents. If experience is worth anything I did well, as I spent almost the whole summer and then had to buy a hundred pounds of coffee sugar for my swarms, besides using all my surplus, and doubling them up so that I had only tour swarms from eight hives. — 1867 American Bee Journal
> In October I fed the weak colonies as much syrup, (made dissolving coffee sugar in hot water and boiling it until all the scum rose und was skimmed off), as they would carry down. — 1868 American Bee Journal
But it wasn't universally done, as seen here:
> We have had a very cold winter here, and a great many bees perished for the want of food and suitable hives to withstand the severe winter. The latter part of last summer was so dry that the bees did not gather honey enough to winter on, and feeding bees sugar is yet a great novelty with some people here. — W B. Zinn, Holbrook, W. Va. May 8, 1885 American Bee Journal
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