REGARDING           RE>SugarSyrup/Honey
 
Richard Barnes wrote:
>I winter with one brood box and one super.  In the
spring I pull the super which will have 3-4 frames of brood and 5-6 frames
of syrup/honey left from winter feeding or from spring feeding.  I use the
super to start a new hive by placing the super under a brood box for about a
month while the bees pull the wax in the brood chamber above.  Then I
reverse and put the brood box on the bottom and the bees start to fill the
super with honey from the spring flow.  When I pull this super off I many
times find 3-4 frames of honey that tastes a lot like sugar syrup and is a
different color from the spring flow honey so I assume it is from the syrup
fed.  I live in South Central Oklahoma and here it is November and my bees
are still active.  We have not had our first killing frost yet!
 
If I extract this honey it is a light straw color and is "sweeter" than the
normal spring flow honey.  If I feed this back to the hive, do I not get
into the question of what effect feeding honey back to the hive can have?<
 
This is an interesting method of management, and completely different from how
I would do it in southeastern Michigan.  I understand that you winter in one
deep brood chamber plus a medium depth super.  But once you remove the super
in the late spring, do you give the colony another deep chamber, or manage
them in one deep only plus supers?  Here, I would always use at least two
deeps, year round (sometimes three).
 
Why do you extract the "honey" from the wintering super?  Why not just leave
it as part of the brood chamber setup for good, allowing the brood to expand
into it as the "honey" is consumed, and afterward letting the colony refill it
with winter stores again, either from collected nectar or from syrup feeding?
In that case, fresh supers placed atop the colony during the flow would fill
up with good nectar honey only.
 
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA