I'd rather not put anything on my hives and let them survive on their own; it's one of the reasons I run three deeps - so they have plenty of winter stores.  The situation I ran into this past winter was that ALL my hives chimneyed up three deeps, leaving lots of stores in the hives.  Combined, there was more than a deep of full frames left in most hives.  Clusters were at the tops of the frames of the top deep and extending down onto the frames, some relatively small (e.g. NWC), but some really big (e.g. Italian, Russian).  These were not weak colonies in the fall that went into winter marginal and/or low on stores, and this occurred across several strains, including Russian, Buckfast Minnesota Hygienic, NWC, Sooper Yooper.  The ones I managed to save by adding dry sugar have boomed, and I've made splits to build back up.  Have queens coming from Strachan to standardize back to NWC to try to reduce at least one variable.

So, I'm sort of in a situation of once bitten twice shy.  Would rather leave them alone, but don't want to run into problems in mid-winter and so prefer to do a prophylactic measure as a last action in the fall, rather than a) have to pry off covers in really cold weather to emergency feed, or b) open them up too late and find dead bees.  Maybe (hopefully), the situation won't repeat, but I don't want to take that chance.  If none of the colonies needs the sugar over the winter, then I'll chalk it up to a bad winter last season and probably not repeat the practice.  It's just really hard to open up a hive and see dead bees, knowing it could/should have been avoided.

Okay, went to bed before sending this last night and thought about it (Does anyone else count bees, instead of sheep?).  MAYBE, using my stethoscope, this winter I could get a better handle on where the clusters are in the hive early on.  Then, only add sugar, if a cluster makes it to the top of the stack.  I'll think about that one.  Would still mean possibly opening a hive in mid-winter, if last winter repeats itself, but would prevent adding dry sugar unnecessarily.  Hmmmm...

###################################
Bill
Claremont, NH
+43.35687 +43° 21’ 25”
-72.3835   -72° 23’ 01”
CWOP: D5065
Weather Underground: KNHCLARE3
HonetBeeNet: NH001

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm