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