allen dick wrote:
>>As far as winter feed, the best to worse are sucrose (cane sugar
>>dissolved in warm, not boiling, water), HFCS and honey.
>
> I think that this is a generalization.  While often true, I think it is
> hard to beat good clover (or other white) honey laid into place early by
> a strong, healthy colony of bees.

My bees, also, overwinter on "summer" or light/white/whatever honey. The
findings I posted are from a study by British scientists.


> As for HFCS, caged bee studies by Rob Currie have shown that type 55
> gives a slightly shorter bee life than sugar.  Type 42 is not
> recommended for wintering AFAIK.

Which was the finding of the Brits.

> We don't ever touch the honey in our broods, and winter on mostly honey,
> supplemented by as much sugar syrup as the bees will take.  We had 11.5%
> winter loss last winter, while others lost up to 90%.

My losses run about the same. For several years I did not lose a colony.
Did some experimenting with open bottoms and plastic foundation and lost
some colonies, more because of that than feed.

I am not touting sugar as the way to go, since that is not what I do. I
do not feed at all, except candy in the spring. If you are going to
feed, use sugar. If you want to feed more cheaply, use HFCS. But if you
really want to be cheap and have them come through fine, let them
overwinter on light or summer honey.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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