Andy Nachbaur says:
>For Honey Bee's dry feeding is ok in an emergency situation,
but not so good as a regulated or metered way to feed honey bees to
increase stores or stimulate brood rearing. Though feeding dry sugar
will work and some may use it this way, but it will also burn out the
bees, or prematurely age them.
 
     You have really stimulated a lot of conversation, as most of us in this
area use dry sugar through the cold part of the winter, switching to syrup,
at least for breeding stock by March, when we want to jump start the bees.
 
     But neither I, nor any of my local colleagues, feel that dry sugar does
any damage to bees.  With bees, as with people, work is excellent therapy.
Whenever there is no flow by Mother Nature, a flow by Dixie Crystal seems to
do a lot of good.
 
    But it seems helpful to clarify one of our *ground rules*, that is to
never let the bees run completely out of honey in the brood chamber.
Today, I was checking, and found a few light ones. I slipped a frame of honey
into each.  During cold weather, such as we are having right now, the bees
cannot process the sugar, so it is important that they have a frame or so of
capped honey to hold them.  In warmer weather they will go back at the sugar.
 
Also:
>We now have our sugar delivered in an insulated stainless
steal tanker loads and purchase it on bid from the various producers
and brokers. One local beekeeper handles it all for the rest of us
and fills our cans at cost.
 
   I'm sure we would look at syrup more favorably if we had local sources of s
upply.  We've kicked around the idea of a group ordering a tanker load
delivered, but it hasn't come together yet. We'd be hard pressed to store it,
too.
 
   It sounds as though you are using straight corn syrup, with no dilution.
Is that true?  I have spent a lot of time cooking what syrup I do use.
 
And
>One year the sugar price went out of sight. I had the opportunity to feed
imported honey and used several car loads that year.
 
Did you have any extra foulbrood afterwards?  I remember a study that said
that much of the imported honey was loaded with foulbrood spores.  I've
always been reluctant to feed liquid honey, though I've fed a lot of it in
the frames.  It seems logical that once honey from many hives is mixed in a
tank, the probabilities of spore contamination rises.  Just one hive with AFB
that is not diagnosed would contaminate a lot of honey.  Or no?
 
Finally:
> In a normal bee yard there is always going to be what we call "dinks", and
personally find this a good and economical way to identify them in some
situations. Most beekeepers know what to do with dead hives, but are never
sure what to do with the dinks that can cost you more in time and money then
setting up a new hive.
 
   Here we are wholeheartedly in agreement.  Beekeepers take a big step up,
when they quit trying to nurse along junk bees and learn to call a cull a
cull, and do it!
 
   Thanks for a very stimulating contribution.
 
[log in to unmask]         Dave Green
Eastern Pollinator Newsletter, PO Box 1215, Hemingway, SC  29554