Spirited defence of USA beekeeping from Bob, as expected!
Of course starving bees must be fed - but if they are rearing brood -
especially those longer living winter bees - then feeding sugar rather than
honey will risk breeding weak deficient bodies.
The fructose large beekeepers buy in drums is probably better than the dry
sucose small beekeepers buy at the grocery, but it is still refined and
contains only carbohydrate.  That is an energy food only. If bees can
collect
pollen, the nurse beees will be able to secrete proper brood food - but if
bees
are starving in the drought, are there any pollen sources? And larvae are
fed part brrod food and part nectar/honey.
I realise syrup costs less than feeding back honey - but do beekeepers
follow the logic right thru?  Feeding their own children sugar water will
keep them alive , although thin, pasty and with perpetually dripping noses
as their immune systems will not fully develop. Greed is a bad basis for
designing management systems , whether for companies, families or bees.
But I will always bow to research over intuitive feelings and anecdotes.
Artificial honey made from autumn sugar feeds is undoubtedly better for
winteing, as all the bees need then is fuel to maintain warmth and sugar
honey leaves no residues (as it has no body) needing to be voided - but
winter is when there is no brood being reared.  However if too much honey
has been stripped out and replaced only with sugar honey,  I really do doubt
if the vital replacement bees reared in Jan-March will be strong, long-lived
and healthy.  If they are, it implies that the health-giving properies of
honey that are so appreciated by humans are of no consequence to bees and
are in plants purely as an un-needed by-product - nature rarely seems to
work
like that.  Has research really been aimed at that point?
It was you yourself , Bob, who recently wondered why beekeepers in the USA
today have such dificulty in keeping their bees alive.  I am trying to
pinpoint possible causes. Generalised comments such as 'poor beekeeping
practices' do not move us forward.  What would u put in the dock?

Robin Dartington

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