I've been preparing some visualize for a talk that I will be doing. One comment I always hear is that spring colonies run the risk of starvation once brood rearing starts. From my previous number crunching it was easy to show the link between heat loss and hive enclosure type. An un-insulated hive is cluster driven (Tin = Tout - shows a high correlation) until brood rearing starts at which point (Tin <> Tout shows low correlation) and calculated enclosure heat loss starts showing high correlation with the outside temperature. This only applies to uninsulated colonies. 

I want to understand just how much honey goes into brood rearing vs heating the nest. I used a paper from (Harbo 1993) to get some values on how much honey is required to raise brood. It looks like winter temperatures in the study location are warmer than my summers so heating inputs are minimal (or much less).

I am not advocating insulating or not (that's up to you). I am just looking for the numbers. If you find ways to improve my "model" please let me know. If you have other references, I would like to have a look at them.

Here is my simple spreadsheet and a quick PPT. The spreadsheet estimates the honey/pollen needs for raising brood only. My model 1st pass uses a simple queen laying rate increase and survival rate between stages.

Harbo Study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qp18TTW12G2o3dGgA5w8ravnMRfDVi4X/view?usp=sharing

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BaVisMlqQuffV1rqeoUi8yqct3YOurlA/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104172123600853119344&rtpof=true&sd=true (I would download it vs using google sheets)

PPT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yRTyNuDwuDZpm_fDXGZINyCVh3u8n_dJ/view?usp=sharing

John R Harbo (1993) Effect of brood rearing on honey consumption and the survival of worker honey bees, Journal of Apicultural Research, 32:1, 11-17, DOI: 10.1080/00218839.1993.11101282
Study Location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana 
Experiment 1: The mean temperature between 6 and 27 February was 13.2°C with 14 days having max- imum temperatures of > 20°C
Experiment 2: During the 20 days of brood rearing, the mean temperature was 11.7"C, with nine days having maximum temperatures of> 20°C

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