From: "Lloyd Spear"   'there are three overriding rules for hobbyists who
live in
> areas without a major flow (most hobbyists).  .  Those rules are FEED,
FEED,
> FEED.  ...a hobbyist  should be more than willing to sacrifice one year of
honey to get 3-4 or
> more supers of completely drawn comb per hive!'
Lloyd was commenting on the advice 'there is NO way to get foundation drawn
without a NECTAR
> flow or  feeding an artificial nectar like 1:1 sugar syrup'

I find it very disheartening - after all the discussion we have had on sugar
honey - that the advice to beginners to feed sugar syrup in order to get
supers drawn is still trotted out without an attached warning that your
entire crop that year will not be fit for anything than feeding to pigs (or
extracting and storing for use as winter feed, which is a lot of work),
because if sugar is fed when supers are on, the honey in them must be
adulterated with sugar honey to an extent - possible to a very high
proportion if u FEED, FEED, FEED. You can eat it yourself certainly, if u
like a sweet tasteless paste, but u must not sell it at any price , and very
definitely u must not let anyone get the idea that this stuff is what the
best beekeepers sell to the public for 12 times the cost of sugar .

Producing honey of high quality is not difficult - but it does require a
little patience.  To draw supers of foundation, u put them on a little ahead
of whatever flow u have, and the bees draw out what they need to store the
surplus.  Yes, they use some nectar to draw comb, and wax makers are delayed
in turning to foraging, so u get less honey than if u have drawn comb
available, that is natural. Next year u have drawn supers and can get more.
That is beekeeping.

IMHO,  FEEDING FEEDING FEEDING is not true beekeeping - it relates to
beekeeping somehow like rearing battery chickens relates to free-range. It
is exploiting an animal by forcing it to act unnaturally in order to make
profits thru mass production of an inferior product.

What beekeepers do is of course there own decision.  The general problem, as
said before, is that ALL beekeepers share ownership of the term 'honey'.  If
a few bring down the public's appreciation of what is 'quality honey' we all
potentially suffer.  Beekeepers are far more of a danger to beekeeping long
term than mites, in my opinion.

So my earnest advice on drawing supers of foundation is NEVER EVER FEED
SUGAR WHEN SUPERS ARE ON.  NEVER STRIP SO MUCH HONEY FROM HIVES THAT THEY
INEVITABLY STARVE AND THEN CLAIM EXCUSE TO FEED SUGAR - QUALITY HONEY
PRODUCTION IS ABOUT HARVESTING ONLY THE TRUE SURPLUS.

The loss of honey due to bees drawing comb is often exaggerated.  Provided
thick foundation is provided, the amount of extra wax needed to draw out the
cell walls is very small.  Shave off a comb, weigh the wax, multiply by say
7 times to get the honey equivalent.   Not much.  Yes, the wax makers are
not foraging - but they will later.  So far as I know, producing wax does
not reduce the length of the subsequent foraging period of each individual
bee.

Robin Dartington

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