At 10:29 AM 7/3/96 -0400, you wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Mark D. Egloff wrote:
>
>>      Gentle beepeople:
>>      I have heard and read of overwintering 5 frame nucs and am
>>      over existing parent hives.  But is there enough room for
>>      adequate honey stores in a 5 frame nuc?
>>
>        We wintered 6 frame nucs this past winter. If the temp. is right,
>honey stores are no problem. I think even 4 or 3 frames may be adequate
>because they had so much honey left.
>
Bee-L'ers,
 
        We winter 6 frame (medium-depth) nucs as well. The temperature in
the room is 46 F plus or minus 3 F. On average our nucs consume 6.2 lbs. of
corn syrup during the wintering period. Feeding one gallon of corn syrup per
nuc gives us sufficient winter stores for all of the nucs.
        You may want to consider indoor wintering your colonies on corn
syrup or granulated sugar syrup instead of honey. I have heard that the
amount of ash and other non-digestible substances is greater in honey than
in corn or cane sugar syrup. Therefore, with honey (compared to corn syrup),
the bees have to hold a greater volume of waste in their bodies during the
time they are being wintered indoors.
        Other beekeepers that winter indoors have told us that they
experience a greater amount of dysentery when indoor wintering their bees on
honey instead of corn syrup. I've never seen any data to back these claims
up but it all sounds logical to me. It might be something worth considering
anyway. You'll need to feed at least one gallon of syrup anyway to get some
Fumidil-B into the hive.
 
 
Craig Abel
Entomologist
North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station (USDA-ARS)
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa,  50014
U.S.A.
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