Hi Tom and All:
 
You wrote:
 
>1 lb (.45 kgs) of honey contains 0.8 lb (.36 kgs) sugar, therefore the
>colony requires 10 X .8 = 8 lbs (3.6 kgs)  sugar, fed in syrup form.
 
I enjoy the way your computer programmer's mind works, always trying to
reduce the problem to a calculation.  (grin)  But the problem is a little
more complicated and I think you will enjoy the following quote:
 
>Let's take an example and see just how much of our original
>sugar we can .expect to be converted into sealed stores.
>Let's feed 4 gallons of 2:1 or 62 per cent white sugar
>syrup. This will contain 32 pounds of sugar at the rate of
>16 pound to the gallon and should weigh in the vicinity of
>52 pounds assuming our ripened stores will contain 18 per
>cent moisture we have to lose 20 per cent water or about
>10.4 pounds of water. Now this represents an elimination
>cost of nearly 3 pounds of sugar, if 4-5 ounces of sugar,
>are lost per pound of excess water. This sugar itself when
>consumed by the bees will also release excess water of
>combustion that will require energy to eliminate.  However,
>that is getting a bit complicated. Now the bees are going to
>use something like 5-9 pounds of honey at sugar to build
>enough wax to hold the syrup, although this figure could
>fluctuate depending on how drawn out the combs were. But
>from our original 52 pounds of syrup we have lost or used up
>10.5 pounds. of water, and say 11 pounds of sugar to
>eliminate the water and produce the wax. This leaves us with
>about 30.5 pounds of ripened stores. As a rough role of
>thumb in estimating stores produced from syrup.   The final
>weight of ripened stores in the comb is slightly less than
>the weight of dry sugar in the original syrup - in our case
>we could expect about 30 pounds of ripened stores from 32
>pounds of sugar.
 
For the full article (an excellent one!) you used to be able to send the
message "get syrup" to Nick Wallingford's autoresponder.  Probably you still
can.  Why don't you update the list Nick with what you still offer on your
autoresponder.
 
>Bear in mind of course that the above figures are UK based.
 
Here in Prince Edward Island, Canada a small colony might overwinter on the
amounts you mentioned, but a strong colony would usually starve.
 
Regards, Stan
 
48 N and only warmed by the water here until it freezes (unlike the Emerald
Isle)