Bill Lord asked:-
 >Can someone give me the background on
> inverted syrup?

 Coincidence...I too have an invert syrup question!

My understanding has always been that bees must undertake flight to
stimulate production of the enzyme necessary to digest sucrose to the
monosaccharides glucose and fructose. Indeed when I have fed sugar syrup to
a load of bees it has immediately induced a significant stimulation of
flight activity, so much so, that we generally refer to the feed as "Avgas"!
Despite a plethora of info on the web about syrup feeding, I am still
confused. Most of that info refers to feeding in the colder climates of the
northern hemisphere to either establish a sufficient store of energy within
the hive for over wintering in essentially hibernation conditions, or to
enable the bees to break that dormancy by stimulating brood production in
readiness for the spring  to follow.

We are in the southern hemisphere and our requirement is quite different,
since bees can fly every day here, and wintering feed stores just are not a
problem....normally. Instead, if I have to feed, its usually to compensate
for a summer drought, and these can be quite prolonged....the last one went
on for 2 years!
There are situations where it is not advantageous to encourage the bees to
embark on serious flight activity, so feeding invert syrup which is already
broken down to its monomers is the better alternative. I have done this in
the past, but only where I have made up large numbers of relatively weak
nucleus hives and I wanted to keep the bees at home looking after brood, and
conserve their energy until they were established and bee numbers increased
sufficiently.

Surely that is a situation which could apply in the northern hemisphere too,
where bees are being fed to build up stores in preparation for winter?
Wouldn't it be better to feed invert syrup rather than sucrose to avoid
stimulating the bees to "waste" precious energy just to stimulate production
of the hydrolysing enzyme? This assumes of course that flight activity is
not going to result in a net inflow of nutritional stores, otherwise why are
you feeding?

Another thing I am very curious about is the recommended feeding of sugar
syrup to confined cell starter hives (ie "swarm  box" starters, or Swathmore
starter hives). Surely invert syrup would be a much superior feed here too?

Of course, sucrose feed is a well proven benefit, but is invert syrup
better?

PeterD
In southern Western Australia where its unseasonally cool and damp, much to
the chagrin of the grain farmers trying to harvest.

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