That would then put a firm number to this phenomenon--since brood emerges in approx 20 days (perhaps 21 under cold conditions).  So for starvation due to this sort of gap formation to occur, this phenomenon of rapid honey consumption above the broodnest would have needed to occur during a 20-day period.

It strikes me as odd that a colony would expand the broodnest this rapidly during that 20-day period, during a period when it needed to consume that much honey.

No,  your overthinking it.   As the broodnest expands in early spring,  the food around it is quickly consumed.  This is not winter broodrearing,  but the spring dynamic starting.  Here it happens a lot in a late jan/ feb thaw with 4-5 days of maple pollen flowing.  Very common for us to get several days to a week of "warm weather"   so the brood nest gets a bit scaled up.  Food next to it is consumed.  For 2/3 inches around it.   Then,  mother nature bites....  Back to sub freezing temps,  the bees are forced to cluster,  and then choose  move up or over to food,  or stay with brood.  They always stay with brood.....  3/4 days of this like a freak march blizzard,  will kill the hive.  This happens most often on smaller clusters of course,  but many times if the swing of temps is right,  it can be as big as a soccer ball and still get hammered.

2/3 years back I lost several hundred frames of brood from a snap like that.... this time most survived but they had more brood than they could warm for 2 days.  Lots of chilled brood  which takes a long time to get cleaned out.


Charles

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