Hi Bill &Michael and all,

Bill wrote,
conditions in the hive are different that the conditions outside.

True Bill, but what I should have said maybe the garage? What I'm looking 
for is a average , if I took the couple thousand hives I'm setting on now, I 
would probably have several hundred different conditions, so I go for the 
happy medium.

Syrup,  these are standards, sucrose 66% solids,  hfcs 77% solids  it also 
will depend on the supplier.

Michael wrote,
>It must be that your bees don't have a good fall pollen flow.

No Mike, they have a fair flow but I want fifteen frames of bees in late 
January and I also want a low D/O rate. Right now I'm averaging about 6% for 
winter loss.

>Feeding colonies all they will take is wasteful and expensive

I didn't say add supers and start feeding, the bees will only consume what 
they have room for, I'm assuming they are not five story high.

>I now see little dysentery, and my colonies are "fat" with no fumidil 
>crutch,

Funny, I had to send sample to the lab to get results for mine, some friend 
of mine have it moderately, they have bees in Calif, Montana, S Dakota and 
Texas. I'm not just talking about My Calif. You cannot see(with the naked 
eye) Dysentery problems until its too late, I don't want to risk thousands 
of hives @$150.00 pollination fee.

When you are running several thousand hives and they have been in several 
different states for the summer you cannot micro-manage them. If I had 100 
hives down the street and never moved them then maybe I could.

Keith Jarrett 

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