I made an interesting observation today that tends to confirm - to me - my
belief in unwrapping hives earlier, rather than later.
 
After consulting this list and receiving some good pointers on making
pollen supplement patties, I went around to some of our hives about March
20th and gave them each one pollen supplement patty, and one
medicated grease patty.  After consulting with several experts, I decided
not to use (essential) oils because of potential unknown toxic effects.
 
Some yards I had unwrapped at the time, but most I had left wrapped,
since we are experiencing minus 18C temps or colder some nights, and I am
sensitive to the popular belief that it is good to leave them wrapped
until May (even though it goes against the evidence I have accumulated
...Excuses, I know for not following my own advice).
 
Besides... we simply were unable to get into many yards to do more than
add patties due to the unusual amount of hard snow drifts still around the
hives and also a shortage of help.
 
Today I went out to a few yards, feeding sugar syrup and noticed that in
*only one yard* had they really touched the feed patties.
 
That yard was the *only* one of the yards that I visited today that was
unwrapped - the rest of today's sample were still wrapped.  Some of the
hives in this one unwrapped yard had actually *finished* a one pound
patty.  Every hive in the yard - even weak ones - had eaten *at least*
half a patty.  Other yards had almost totally ignored the soy/yeast/pollen
mixture so far.
 
The grease patties were largely untouched, since I had left them in a
folded over piece of wax paper, and many hives were only starting to chew
their way in.
 
Of course one yard is a small sample, and we'll have to see about the
other unwrapped yards, but I find this very interesting.
 
I have long advocated early unwrapping to encourage the bees to cluster
rather than to fly around bothering the neighbours and wasting energy,
but this is the first time I have seeen this particular effect because we
have not used patties for 15 years or so.
 
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?  What does it mean?
 
Allen