Paul Hosticka wrote: >Emergency feeding is of course necessary when a colony is in danger of starvation. Rather than putting 25# of dry sugar on in March or a candy board on in Oct. try getting the colony weight up with the same feed in Sept. The colony will put it where it wants it and save you a lot of grief.< This certainly makes sense. I was thinking this while reading the earlier contributions on this topic. Here in NB I am in a similar climate regime to Mike Palmer, who is quite derogatory towards the practice of providing emergency dry sugar on top over winter. He does feed up in fall where necessary, though. I do get the impression his fall flow is better than what we usually get here. (On a related note, he has no worries wintering on goldenrod honey, another bone of contention with some in terms of digestability). I have used sugar slabs in 2" frames on top with a built in top entrance since a neighboring beek lost apparently good hives to sudden starvation in April some years ago. Sugar mixed with cold water, sets up hard in a day or 2. I look at it as a 'belt and braces' situation. Sure, I aim to fill the hives up as needed in fall. The slabs are insurance. Lots of things can conspire against bees and funny things happen no matter what you do. Providing one more bulwark against starvation is pretty easy to do - at least with a smallish number of hives, which is what I have. Most times they only use a small proportion of the sugar, but knowing it's there is nice in cold Aprils like we have just had. cheers Rob *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html