Hello Barry,
 
Sorry to hear of your loss. Feeding bees is an art that most beekeepers
who feed large amounts of sugar in any form learn over the years of the
pitfalls. This is not to say that is what damaged your bees and I am
sure you are doing the right thing by changing your operation.
 
Here in California we seldom feed to gain winter stores, or anytime the
bees are not rearing brood, and if we do some beekeepers will use
protein patties to get a little brood going.
 
Anytime we feed sugar we are putting our bees to work and prematurely
ageing them and if there are not new bees hatching out to replace the
one's that will die the population will take a dramatic downward path
that could be disastrous in time.
 
In my experience fall feed should be heavy inverted syrup so the bees do
not have to invert it and use up their limited resources of what ever
they add to nectar to invert it, and the energy to do it. And if
possible should be done when there is still good flying weather and
pollen plants available.
 
There are also some natural flows in the fall and other times that the
bees because of poor pollen or other conditions will not rear brood.
Every few years we get a early Manzenita flow from one or more of the 50
verities that grow here in the mountains and coast that comes late in
the winter before other plants are blooming. I have made as much as
60# per hive and after extracting it found that the bees had dwindled
down to the size of a good nuc or large handful as they had little
pollen income and because the big over wintered clusters were mostly old
bees that were sacrificed to make the honey.
 
I have also found out the hard way that leaving large amounts of honey
on the bees retards their growth in the spring and I am sure this is
because of the loss of heat and the btu's it takes to keep the hive
warm when they have several supers of cold honey above the brood nest in
the early spring.
 
I have come to the conclusion that large amounts of honey are is not
good food for the bees and not necessary in intensively managed hives.
Here in Central California bees do not winter well under normal
conditions because of the amount of flight time they get when there is
no flowers to work and the lack of cold weather to make them cluster and
go dormant which seems to be important. To overcome this normal decline
in populations many beekeepers winter their hives with only adequate
food reserves and plan to feed sugar syrup as early in the spring as
there are flowers to increase brood rearing. Many beekeepers winter in
single hive bodies and put the supers back after the bottoms are full of
brood.
 
  >    I used 1 quart jars with a boardman feeder on the biggest part of my
  >hives.  Some I used a top feeder.  I lost bees (hive is empty of bees)
  >using both methods.  I used 1 cc of wintergreen per qt. sugar syurp.  I
  >ordered the oil from Lorann Oils of Lansing Mi.  I treated my hives for
  >almost 40-45 days and them taking about 5 quarts each.  My hives (double
  >Hivebodies) all had a full hivebody of stores and still have the stores
  >but not a single bee dead or alive in 24 hives.  I have 4 single hives
  >that don't have enough bees to cover a single frame.  I will let them die
  >out.  I have three hives (double bodies) that have a fair amount of bees
  >but doubt if they make the winter as very small amount of Capped brood.  I
  >really don't know what has saved the three remaining hives as they are
  >covered with Varroa.  Have Apistan strips on now with sticky boards and
  >boards are coated with mites.  Had good weather as bees were still
  >scrounging feed around the Honey house.  All I know is I will use Apistan
  >from now on.  Costly but lesson learned.
 
 
I have seen and heard this story many times and that was without the
addition of anything to the sugar. But only time will tell if others
report the same problems adding chemicals and oils to their sugar
syrups. I would be surprised if 1 cc in a quart of feed would even
have an effect on the mites, but you must admit that you reduced their
numbers the hard way.<G>
 
                       ttul, the OLd Drone
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