Greetings:

I too have been wondering about this seeming anomaly: why don’t  bees take 
up syrup in spring as readily as they once did in fall?  Is it really the 
esoteric ratio of the concoction?  Is it because the syrup is going bad 
despite the beekeeper’s creative attempts to make it last fresh longer?  
Or is it the plum cold spring temperature?  Or is it simply my wife's 
fault?

My observation has been that it is the cold temperature.  Plain and 
simple.  Once the mercury shoots up near 70’s F and above, I could see my 
gallon jars placed atop fire off roaring bubbles of rockets; however, 
whenever the chill returns, just as it does now at the tail end of winter, 
there is little activity of feeding.  Even the insulated hive-top feeders, 
sitting right above the warm brood chamber, fail to attract the bees; it 
appears that given the option between sucking syrup and parenting, the 
bees’ priority is always to maintain warmth in the brood rather than 
gathering syrup during this transitional period.  Typically the bees would 
work the syrup in the late afternoon when the temperature reaches near or 
above 60’s.  When the temperature lingers only around 55 F, they tend not 
to touch it.

To say the obvious, then, open-feeding in spring, especially when fresh 
nectar starts to become available, is rarely successful: one can waste 
money not realizing this unless one does experiment on the behavior of 
inebriated bees, something I am planning on doing, due to the syrup now 
turned into alcohol.  Thus in spring (and fall, too) feeding colonies 
individually, I find, is a better option—-whichever methods one employees: 
zip-lock bags, hive-top feeders, frame-feeders, gallon jugs inside the 
empty deep or atop outside, as I do, or feeder buckets turned upside 
down.  Just make sure that the feeder is within immediate reach of the 
brood, not distanced by extra bodies of hives, a crucial mistake one of my 
apprentices have made recently.  On average, early spring days are much 
colder as the earth comes out of the winter mode than late fall days when 
the season is coming out of hot summer, starting to cool off; plus in fall 
bees are eager to horde winter storage, probably influenced by the 
shortening daylight hours as well as the creepy chill in the air (and 
cranky drones around the house).  

Thus I prefer not to open-feed them in spring; rather, get at them 
individually, an excellent method particularly when the weather in 
transitional period is unstable.  This is the crucial time for food as the 
bees explode in brood-building and the winter store is nearly gone in some 
colonies, especially the strong ones.  It might rain outside but if they 
are given this insurance of liquid sugar, they will come out strong to 
meet the nectar flow head on.   My own maxim is feed them between Bradford 
pear and black locust bloom.  And no more.  Be patient; when warmer days 
return, as they surely will, your bees will suck down the syrup.  A good 
colony will wolf down a gallon in two to three days, sending rockets of 
bubbles, of hope, up through the jars.

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